At least seven people were killed and several injured on Sunday in an Israeli attack on a school hosting displaced Gaza residents in the Shati refugee camp, near northern Gaza City, according to local medical sources.
Kafr Qasim School is not part of the UN refugee agency’s (UNRWA) network of centers. But according to Mahmud Basal, a spokesman for Gaza’s Civil Defense, the center hosts hundreds of displaced Palestinians.
The Israeli military acknowledged the attack, which it said targeted a group of Hamas militiamen operating in the compound. As always when attacking civilian infrastructure in Gaza, Israeli forces say they took precautions to “minimize” damage to civilians, and accuse the Islamist group of “abusing” such buildings by using them as shelters.
The attack comes just 24 hours after Israeli forces bombed another school compound in the Gazan capital, killing 22 people, including 13 children and six women.
The bombing also left around 30 people injured and several missing in the rubble, after two missiles hit a three-story school building in the Zeitun district.
Israel regularly bombs schools where the displaced population is sheltering, saying they are used as hiding places for Hamas militants. Since October, more than 500 educational centers have been attacked in the devastated Palestinian enclave.
The vast majority of the enclave’s population, nearly two million people, live displaced in tents or in overcrowded schools, with little access to running water, electricity or hygiene products.
Since the start of the war, 41,391 people have been killed and 95,760 wounded in Gaza, according to the latest figures from the Hamas-controlled enclave’s health ministry, which has warned that generators at all medical centers in the strip could stop working within 10 days due to lack of fuel and parts to repair them.
“We call on all interested international and humanitarian institutions to intervene quickly to provide fuel, filters and spare parts for the generators,” the office said in a statement.
