No fewer than 22 people have been killed and dozens wounded in an Israeli air strike on a UN-run school sheltering displaced families in northern Gaza, local medics and the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency say.
According to the director of a local hospital, the attack on Abu Hussein Primary School for Boys in the Jabalia refugee camp killed children and women.
People were seen transporting a number of casualties and getting buckets of water in an attempt to extinguish a fire inside a tent.
The Israeli military stated that it had “conducted a precise strike on an operational meeting point for Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists.”.
It also identified 12 men as being among “dozens” of Palestinian armed group members present in the facility at the time of the strike.
The military accused them of involvement in rocket assaults on Israel as well as recent attacks on Israeli troops in Gaza.
Hamas dismissed the allegation that the school was being utilised for military reasons as “mere lies” and part of the enemy’s “systematic policy to justify its crime.”.
Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, director of the neighbouring Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia, told the BBC in a voice note that the strike killed approximately 25 people and injured 75 others, with children and women among the casualties brought there.
“Our hospital is small in size, and we cannot receive all these injured people. Most of the people presented to us were women or children,” he said.
The town of Jabalia and its refugee camp have been subjected to severe Israeli bombardment and brutal fighting on the ground since the Israeli military launched a ground attack 12 days ago to target what it claimed were Hamas members assembling there.
More than 50,000 Palestinians have fled their houses in response to hostilities and Israeli evacuation orders, but UN officials warn tens of thousands remain trapped in increasingly grave conditions, with water and food running out.
According to the UN, the Kamal Adwan hospital, as well as the nearby Indonesian and al-Awda hospitals, are experiencing severe fuel and other supply shortages.
“We are working under fear, under the sound of explosions everywhere. We have a big challenge in our hospital,” Dr. Abu Safiya said.
“We have a lack of medicine, a lack of medical supplies, a lack of medical equipment. We don’t have enough staff, especially specialists for our ER.”
For the first two weeks of this month, the UN reported that no humanitarian goods entered northern Gaza through Israel’s ports.
Aid vehicles began to arrive this week after the Biden administration delivered a scathing letter telling Israel that if it would not expand aid to Gaza within 30 days, it risked losing US military assistance.
Israel stated that it was not obstructing the admission of humanitarian aid and accused Hamas of hijacking and stealing relief delivery, which the group rejected.
On Thursday, a UN-backed assessment warned that “the risk of famine persists across the whole Gaza Strip,” adding, “Given the recent surge in hostilities, there are growing concerns that this worst-case scenario may materialise.”
According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), around 1.84 million individuals were experiencing acute food insecurity, with 664,000 facing “emergency” levels of hunger and nearly 133,000 facing “catastrophic” levels.
The final figure is three-quarters lower than the previous report in June, which the IPC attributed to a short rise in humanitarian assistance and commercial supplies between May and August.
However, the IPC predicted that the number of people experiencing “catastrophic” hunger will nearly triple in the following months due to a dramatic drop in assistance supplies and food availability since September.
In response to the findings, UN Secretary General António Guterres stated on X: “Famine looms.
This is intolerable. Crossing points must be opened promptly, bureaucratic bottlenecks removed, and law and order restored so that UN organisations can provide life-saving humanitarian aid.”
Israel initiated a campaign to eradicate Hamas in reaction to the group’s unprecedented onslaught on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, which killed over 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 more.
More than 42,430 people have died in Gaza since then, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
