MORE than 50 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in central and southern Gaza, with one air raid hitting a school where thousands of displaced people were sheltering, according to Palestinian officials.
At least 30 people were killed in an Israeli attack on Khadija School in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, the Palestinian Health Ministry said on Saturday.
Fifteen children and eight women were among those killed in the attack on the school in Deir el-Balah, Gaza’s Government Media Office said, and more than 100 people were wounded.
The Israeli military said in a statement it had targeted a “Hamas command and control centre inside the Khadija school compound in central Gaza”.
The statement said the school was being used to launch attacks against troops and as a weapons cache and that it warned civilians before the raid.
At Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah, ambulances raced wounded Palestinians into the medical facility after the Israeli military attack on Khadija School. Some of the wounded also arrived on foot, their clothes stained with blood.
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Al-Aqsa Hospital, described “a state of chaos inside the hospital as doctors are trying to provide wounded Palestinians with essential medical care”.
“The situation is absolutely dire; everyone in the hospital has suffered critical injuries. They are receiving treatment on the floor, in all departments, and all beds are over their capacity.”
Hamas, the Palestinian group that governs Gaza, has said the “massacre at Khadija School is a crime that confirms the Israeli enemy’s estrangement from all human values and its defiance of all laws of war.”
“We call on the international community and the United Nations to break the policy of silence and take steps to force the occupation to stop its crimes,” it said.
