IDF says it struck Hamas operatives at inactive Gaza school; 21 reported killed
Hamas authorities say 13 children among fatalities at al-Falah school; senior Hamas intelligence officer and armed looters of aid killed in separate strikes
The Israel Defense Forces carried out an airstrike on Saturday against a group of Hamas operatives at a command room embedded within a former school in Gaza, the military said, in an attack that reportedly killed more than 20 people.
Hamas was using the al-Falah School in the Zeitoun neighborhood to plan and carry out attacks against IDF troops and against Israel, the military said.
The school, inactive amid the war, had also been serving as a shelter for displaced Gazans.
According to the Gaza civil defense agency and health ministry — both run by Hamas — 21 people were killed in the strike.
“Civil Defense crews recovered 21 people, including 13 children and six women,” one of whom was pregnant, agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
There were “around 30 injured, including nine children [needing] limb amputations, as a result of an Israeli bombing on al-Zeitoun School C” in Gaza City, he said.
To mitigate harm to civilians in the strike, the IDF said it carried out “many steps,” including using precision munitions, aerial surveillance, and other intelligence.
“The Hamas terror organization systematically violates international law, brutally exploiting civilian institutions and the population as a human shield for terror activity,” the military added.
It said the target was “embedded inside” the al-Falah School, adjacent to the Al-Zeitoun School buildings. An AFP reporter at the scene confirmed that Al-Zeitoun School C had been hit.
Witnesses told AFP that before the strike, orphans had gathered there because they were due to receive sponsorship from a local NGO for humanitarian assistance.
The IDF has repeatedly hit Hamas operatives at schools, civilian shelters and hospitals, frequently drawing international condemnation. The military says it is doing so because terror operatives regularly hide behind civilians, and argues that it takes pains to avoid harm to innocents.
Earlier Saturday, the military said the Israeli Air Force carried out some 20 airstrikes during the previous day. The strikes targeted buildings used by the Hamas and its operatives, the IDF said.
In another recent airstrike, the IDF said Saturday that it had killed Muhammad Mansour, a prominent Hamas intelligence officer who the military described as a “significant source of technological knowledge in Hamas’s military intelligence.”
Separately, the military released footage Saturday showing drone strikes in the Rafah area of the southern Gaza Strip against gunmen who had attempted to loot a humanitarian aid convoy.
The footage showed the gunmen climbing onto the trucks carrying humanitarian aid as they drove on a designated route.
The IDF said the gunmen were spotted by troops, who directed a drone strike against them as they tried to flee in a car. Another gunman was killed while trying to flee the scene.
The IDF has said Hamas operatives frequently try to hijack aid deliveries before they can be distributed to civilians.
According to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, a separate incident on Saturday saw an Israeli airstrike hit a warehouse in a “densely populated” area of southern Gaza, killing “three ministry of health personnel and a passer-by” and injuring six others.
“The warehouse was directly targeted with several missiles while doctors and staff were performing their duties, preparing to transport the medicines stored there to hospitals under the ministry of health that are facing severe shortages of medicines and supplies,” a statement said.
The war has badly battered Gaza’s health sector, and the World Health Organization said earlier this month that only 17 of its 36 hospitals were partially functional.
War broke out on October 7 when Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 251. It is believed that 97 of the hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 33 confirmed dead by the IDF.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 40,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 17,000 combatants in battle and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools and mosques.
