Civil Defense announces 18 dead in Israeli strike on Gaza school

Photo: Eyad Baba Agence France-Paris Displaced Palestinians sheltering at the UN’s Al-Jawni school look on after an Israeli airstrike hit a school in central Gaza.

Agence France-Presse

Published at 23:09

• Middle East

Gaza’s Civil Defense announced that 18 people, including UN staff, were killed Wednesday in an Israeli airstrike on a school converted into a shelter for displaced people, with the Israeli army claiming to have targeted Hamas “terrorists.”

The death toll stands at 18, including two staff members of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal, who had previously put the death toll at 14.

At least 18 people were also injured, according to the source.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres confirmed the deaths of UNRWA staff members at the site, giving the number as six dead.

“A school converted into a shelter for 12,000 people was again targeted by Israeli airstrikes today. Six of our UNRWA colleagues are among the dead,” he told the X network.

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“What is happening in Gaza is completely unacceptable,” Mr. Guterres stressed, declaring that “these dramatic violations of international humanitarian law must stop immediately “.

According to UNRWA, “this is the highest number of deaths among our staff in one go.”

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A medical source at the al-Awda clinic in Nousseirat, one of the two facilities where the dead and wounded were taken, told AFP that the toll was 15 dead and 44 wounded.

AFP is unable to independently verify these tolls.

The Israeli army said in a statement that its air force had “carried out a precision strike on terrorists operating inside a Hamas command center” in the Al-Jouni school.

The Hamas government's press service in the Gaza Strip said that the school, which is run by UNRWA, was sheltering around 5,000 displaced people at the time of the attack. strike.

In front of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital in Deir al-Balah (center), several people arrived on stretchers from the site of the strike, an AFP correspondent noted.

Some were visibly unconscious, and the AFP correspondent saw at least one child and women arriving among the wounded.

“There is no safe place in the Gaza Strip,” commented Umm Ayman, a Palestinian woman who was standing in front of the hospital at the time, “the children, the elderly, the women: what have they done wrong to end up in pieces?.”

In recent months, the army has struck several schools in the Gaza Strip, accusing them of housing Hamas command centers, something the Palestinian Islamist movement denies.

Tens of thousands of displaced people have sought refuge in schools since the war in Gaza began, following Hamas' unprecedented attack in Israel.

The war was triggered on October 7 by a Hamas attack on Israel that killed 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data.

Of the 251 people kidnapped that day, 97 are still being held in Gaza, 33 of whom have been declared dead by the army.

The Israeli reprisals have left at least 41,084 dead, according to a report from the Hamas government's health ministry in Gaza. According to the UN, the majority of the dead are women and children.