Israeli strike on school-turned-shelter in northern Gaza killed 15, Palestinian officials say

Author of the article:

Associated Press

Wafaa Shurafa And Samy Magdy

Published Oct 17, 2024  •  3 minute read

Displaced Palestinians queue to receive food rations, offered by a charity, in Gaza's Al-Shati refugee camp on Oct. 17, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the besieged Palestinian territory. Photo by OMAR AL-QATTAA /AFP via Getty Images

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — An Israeli strike on a school sheltering the displaced in northern Gaza on Thursday killed at least 15 people, including five children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

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The Israeli military said the strike targeted dozens of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants who had gathered at the Abu Hussein school in Jabaliya, an urban refugee camp in northern Gaza where Israel has been waging a major air and ground operation for more than a week.

In a separate development, a building in central Beirut that houses offices of the Al Jazeera news network and the Norwegian Embassy was evacuated after a warning.

Mazen Ibrahim, Al Jazeera’s Lebanon bureau chief, said the building’s administration received three calls telling everyone to leave the building, which he said houses the embassies of Norway and Azerbaijan, as well as dozens of offices. He said it was unclear who called in the warning.

Norwegian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ragnhild Simenstad said the building was evacuated after a “bomb threat,” without elaborating.

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Israel has ordered the evacuation of several buildings, as well as entire cities, towns and villages, as it strikes what it says are targets linked to the Hezbollah militant group.

There have also been several instances of evacuation warning calls and text messages that turned out to be bogus, which Lebanese security agencies say they are investigating.

Israel has struck central Beirut on two occasions in its latest war against Hezbollah, and both came without warnings.

In northern Gaza, Fares Abu Hamza, head of the ministry’s local emergency unit, confirmed the toll from the Israeli strike and said dozens of people were wounded. He said the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital was struggling to treat the casualties.

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“Many women and children are in critical condition,” he said.

The Israeli military said it targeted a command centre run by both militant groups inside the school. It provided a list of around a dozen names of people it identified as militants who were present when the strike was called in. It was not immediately possible to verify the names.

Israel has repeatedly struck tent camps and schools sheltering displaced people in Gaza. The Israeli military says it carries out precise strikes on militants and tries to avoid harming civilians, but its strikes often kill women and children.

Hamas-led militants triggered the war when they stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 others. Some 100 captives are still inside Gaza, about a third of whom are believed to be dead.

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Israel’s offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It does not differentiate between civilians and combatants but says women and children make up a little more than half of the fatalities.

Northern Gaza was the first target of Israel’s ground invasion nearly a year ago and has suffered the heaviest destruction of the war, with entire neighbourhoods in Gaza City and other towns reduced to rubble. Most of the population fled after Israel issued evacuation orders in the opening days of the war, but about 400,000 are believed to have remained despite the harsh conditions.

Earlier this month, Israel once again ordered the full-scale evacuation of the north, and allowed no food aid to enter the area for around two weeks. That led many Palestinians to fear that it had adopted a surrender-or-starve strategy suggested by former Israeli generals.

Israel allowed two shipments of aid to enter the north earlier this week after the United States warned it might reduce its military aid if its ally did not do more to address the humanitarian crisis.

Since the start of the conflict, Israeli forces have launched repeated operations into Jabaliya, a densely populated urban refugee camp dating back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation. The military says militants have repeatedly regrouped there after major operations.

— Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut contributed.

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