Israeli air strikes hit house, school

An Israeli air strike hit a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City yesterday, with Palestinian rescuers reporting five dead and the Israeli military saying it had targeted Hamas fighters.

Thousands of Palestinians displaced by the war, now in its 12th month, have sought shelter in the Shuhada al-Zeitun school, said Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the civil defence agency in the Gaza Strip.

It was the latest school building housing displaced Gazans to be hit by an Israeli air strike, resulting in “five martyrs, including two children and a woman”, Bassal told AFP, adding that several other people were wounded.

AFP could not independently verify the toll.

Bassal said the bodies “were pulled from under the rubble after Israeli warplanes hit the Shuhada al-Zeitun school with two missiles”.

The Israeli military said it carried out a “precise strike” on the school compound which “was used by Hamas terrorists”.

Earlier in the day, the civil defence agency reported an Israeli air strike on a house elsewhere in Gaza City had killed at least 11 people, with more strikes overnight in other parts of the Hamas-run territory leaving at least 10 dead.

“We have recovered the bodies of 11 martyrs, including four children and three women, after an Israeli warplane hit a three-storey house of the Bustan family,” Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the agency, told AFP.

He said the strike took place at around 1:00 am (2200 GMT Friday) and that the house was located near the Shujaiya school in the Al-Tuffah neighbourhood of eastern Gaza City.

“Several families had taken refuge in the house targeted with a single missile without any prior warning,” Bassal said, adding that many others were wounded.

In an earlier statement, Bassal said rescuers were continuing to search for the missing.

The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the strike.

Bassal said Israeli forces carried out similar strikes in some other parts of the Hamas-run territory overnight, killing at least 10 people.

Five people were killed in northwestern Gaza City when an air strike hit a group of people near Dar Al-Arqam school, he said.

Three others were killed in a strike in the Al-Mawasi area of the southern Khan Yunis governorate, where tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought refuge, Bassal added.

The Israeli military has targeted several schools-turned-shelters in recent months, accusing Hamas of using them to hide militants among the civilian population — a charge denied by the Palestinian militant group.

A similar strike on Wednesday on the Al-Jawni school in central Gaza’s Nuseirat killed at least 18 people, according to the civil defence agency.

UN officials said six of the dead at Al-Jawni were staffers of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

The vast majority of the Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once by the war with many seeking safety in school buildings.

The war in Gaza broke out after the October 7 attack by Hamas on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Hamas fighters also seized 251 captives during the attack, 97 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead. The count includes hostages killed in captivity.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Saturday that at least 41,182 people have been killed in the Israeli offensive in Palestine.

The toll includes 64 deaths in the previous 48 hours, according to the ministry, which said 95,280 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began.