Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October, during which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.<\/p>\n
More than 38,660 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory\u2019s health ministry, whose figures do not differentiate between civilians and combatants.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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According to the UN, an estimated 1.9 million people – 90% of Gaza\u2019s population – have been forced to flee their homes, including some who have been displaced up to 10 times.<\/p>\n
Thousands were reportedly sheltering at Abu Oraiban School, which is run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), when it was it struck on Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n
A displaced woman told BBC Arabic that she had been lighting a fire to cook in a corridor when a nearby room was hit.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs soon as the explosion occurred the walls of the room collapsed on us,\u201d she said. \u201cI saw a little boy whose leg was bleeding and a dismembered corpse which people covered with blankets. I also saw a little boy lying in a pool of blood, with his whole face bleeding.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added: \u201cI quickly ran out of the school. I found my aunt at the school gate, hugging her burnt young son. When I left the school, I saw many injured people lying on the ground and bodies torn to pieces.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another resident said his family had been living at the school for six months because UN facilities were supposed to be safe.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are no armed men and no reason to strike schools this way,\u201d he added. \u201cThe dead and injured people are mainly women and children staying at this school.\u201d<\/p>\n
Video footage filmed by a freelance cameraman working for BBC Arabic later on Sunday showed hundreds of people walking past the rubble of a destroyed structure in one corner of the school compound. A heavily damaged staircase could also be seen through two large holes in a wall of the adjoining three-storey school building.<\/p>\n
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Hamas fighters had used the school as \u201ca hideout and operational infrastructure\u201d from which attacks against its troops were directed and carried out.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrior to the strike, numerous steps were taken in order to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions and additional intelligence,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n
The IDF also accused Hamas of systematically violating international law by exploiting civilians and civilian structures as \u201chuman shields\u201d – an accusation the group has denied.<\/p>\n
A spokesman for Gaza\u2019s Hamas-run Civil Defence force, told AFP news agency on Sunday evening that 15 people were killed and that most were women and children.<\/p>\n
On Monday, the health ministry said the death toll had risen to 22, but it did not provide any further details.<\/p>\n
Hamas condemned the Israeli strike as what it called an \u201cextension of the genocide\u201d against displaced Palestinians.<\/p>\n
The IDF has acknowledged carrying out five strikes on or near to schools sheltering displaced people since 6 July. It has said they targeted Hamas politicians, police officers and fighters using them as bases.<\/p>\n
Last Tuesday, hospital officials said at least 29 people had been killed in an Israeli strike on a camp for displaced people outside a school in the town of Abasan al-Kabira, near the southern city of Khan Younis.<\/p>\n
A total of 20 people, including a senior Hamas government official, were reportedly killed in three earlier strikes at two other Unrwa-run schools in Nuseirat and a church-run school in Gaza City.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At least 22 Palestinians were killed and 100 wounded in a strike on Sunday on a UN-run school in central Gaza being used as a shelter by displaced people, the Hamas-run health ministry says. The Israeli military said it had targeted a number of Hamas \u201cterrorists\u201d operating from Abu Oraiban School in the urban Nuseirat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3890,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3889"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3891,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3889\/revisions\/3891"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}