More than 100 Palestinians have been killed and dozens wounded in an Israeli strike on a Gaza school sheltering displaced people, according to Palestinians officials in Gaza.
“The Israeli strikes targeted the displaced people while performing Fajr (dawn) prayers, [which] led to a rapid increase in the number of casualties,” the Gaza Government Media Office said in a statement following the attack on Saturday morning.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said three Israeli rockets hit the school, describing the incident as a “horrific massacre”, with some bodies catching fire.
Al Jazeera’s Hamda Salhout, reporting from Amman, Jordan, said that the bodies of those killed and the injured have been transported to Gaza’s Baptist Hospital.
The Israeli attack on al-Tabin school, located in al-Daraj neighbourhood in central Gaza City, is the fourth such incident to happen in the last week alone, our correspondent said.
“The images coming out of the school immediately after the strike shows tens if not hundreds of bodies just on the ground, some of them in pieces,” she said.
In its statement, the Israeli army said its air forces struck a “command and control centre” that “served as a hideout for Hamas terrorists and commanders” and was also a shelter for the residents of Gaza City.
The Israeli army provided no evidence to support its claims.
Our correspondent said that in the previous incidents that it targeted schools, Israel never presented evidence to the public to prove its claim.
“The army has never once even given us information about he most notable of all these attacks,” she said.
Salhout also pointed out that looking at the images coming out of the school targeted early on Saturday, “the number of injuries, the damage to the buildings, really disprove the claims that there was precise weaponry that was used there”.
More to come…
