GAZA STRIP (AFP) – Civil defence rescuers in Gaza City said an Israeli strike yesterday on a school-turned-shelter killed at least seven people.
The vast majority of the besieged Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once by the war, with many seeking shelter in school buildings.
Civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal reported “seven martyrs and a number of wounded, including serious cases, as a result of Israeli shelling of Kafr Qasim School” in the Al-Shati refugee camp.
He said hundreds of displaced Gazans were sheltering there.
Yesterday’s attack was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes on school buildings housing displaced people in Gaza, where fighting has raged for nearly a year.
On Saturday the civil defence agency said an Israeli strike on another school-turned-shelter, also in Gaza City, had killed 21 people. The military said it was targeting militants.
A strike on the United Nations (UN)-run Al-Jawni School in central Gaza on September 11 drew international outcry after the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said six of its staffers were among the 18 reported fatalities.
The Israeli military accuses Hamas of hiding in school buildings where thousands of Gazans have sought shelter – a charge denied by the Palestinian group.
At least 41,391 Palestinians, a majority of them civilians, have been killed in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since the war began, according to data provided by the Health Ministry. The UN has acknowledged these figures as reliable.
