More than a dozen Palestinians, including children, were killed Thursday in an Israeli airstrike on a school in Jabalia, in the north of the country. Gaza Stripwhich housed displaced people, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said. The Israeli army said in a statement that it had struck “a compound that previously served as the ‘Abou Hassan’ school,” where, it said, “dozens of terrorists from the Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations were present.”
The Health Ministry said at least 15 people were killed, but it did not say how many of them could be militants.
The Israeli military released a list of a dozen names of suspected terrorists who it said were among those who used the compound as a command and control center. It said men “involved in rocket attacks against Israeli territory, as well as in planning and carrying out terrorist attacks against IDF troops and the State of Israel in recent days” were targeted. in an intelligence-driven “precise strike.”
The Israeli military did not specify how many suspected terrorists were believed to have been killed in the attack, but indicated that their alleged presence in the school, which, like most in Gaza, was used as a shelter for Palestinians displaced for a year. war, was “another example of the systematic abuse of civilian infrastructure by the terrorist organization Hamas, in violation of international law.”
Israel Defense Forces/Handout
The military released photos and videos of weapons, apparently taken by troops on the ground before Thursday’s attack, that it said were found inside the school building – evidence, according to the Israeli army, a “complete combat complex”.
Israel recently warned Palestinians to leave northern Gaza, where its military operations have intensified in recent weeks.
The strike took place four days after the Biden administration sent a laconic letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, warning that humanitarian conditions in the decimated Gaza Strip must improve within a month or Israel risks seeing its steady supply of U.S. weapons and war funding cut.
OMAR AL-QATTAA/AFP/Getty
The White House acknowledged Hamas’ frequent use of civilian infrastructure in Gaza to store weapons and fighters, but stressed that civilians must always be protected and cannot be considered combatants if they are unable or unwilling to flee areas used by terrorist groups.
The United States also made clear in its letter to Israeli officials that the Biden administration was opposed to the way Israel was conducting its operations. parallel war against Hamas’ allies Hezbollah in Lebanon in recent weeks. The attack, which Israel says is aimed at ending Hezbollah’s year-long barrage of rocket and drone attacks in support of Hamas, killed more than 2,300 people in Lebanon and displaced most of the country’s population. country, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health.
While Israel has taken steps to reverse the dramatic decline in humanitarian aid flowing to Gaza since receiving the US letter, the IDF has continued to bombard Gaza and Lebanon with massive airstrikes this week, insisting that she was acting in self-defense.
In Gaza, the Health Ministry says more than 42,400 people have been killed since Israel launched its war against Hamas in response to the brutal attack by the United States and Israel’s designated terrorist group against Israel on October 7, 2023.
