At least 20 Palestinians were martyred while taking shelter in a school in Gaza City after Israeli forces on Friday night bombed the facility housing thousands of other displaced Palestinians, according to Palestinian media.
The official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported: “The Israeli occupation forces committed a new massacre by bombing the Osama Bin Zaid School affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, which shelters thousands of displaced people in the Al-Saftawi area in the northern Gaza Strip, resulting in dozens killed and wounded.”
The bombardment on the school followed an Israeli strike on Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital for a second time.
The health ministry in the Gaza Strip has said that at least 9,488 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory since the conflict with Israel erupted last month, AFP reports.
The ministry said at least 3,900 children were among those killed since Israel began striking the Gaza Strip in retaliation to the October 7 attacks carried out by Hamas fighters in southern Israel.
Meanwhile, an Israeli drone fired a missile at the Gaza house of Hamas’ leader Ismail Haniyeh who is currently outside the enclave, Hamas’s Al-Aqsa Radio reported on Saturday. It was unclear whether any of his family members were at the house when it was struck.
Haniyeh, Hamas’ political chief, has been outside the Gaza Strip since 2019, residing between Turkey and Qatar.
Amid the ongoing war between Israel and Gaza, protests have erupted in countries across the world featuring crowds of thousands of people calling for a ceasefire.
Despite witnessing one of the biggest protests for ceasefire by its people, the US has promised military aid to Israel for the ongoing war that has taken the lives of more than 9,000 civilians including nearly 4,000 children
Facilities run by the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees are crowded with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have taken shelter there.
However, despite Israel’s claims of targeting Hamas, Israeli forces continue to target UNRWA facilities that are sheltering displaced and injured Palestinian civilians, doctors, UN staff and journalists.
According to the UNRWA, nearly 50 UN buildings and assets have been affected, with some being directly hit, since the beginning of the war on Oct 7.
These include UNRWA buildings used as shelters where the agency is hosting about 700,000 people, with 25 of these shelters in northern Gaza, hosting 112,000 people, Al Jazeera reported.
A poll that was published this week by a number of Israeli media outlets suggests that the Likud party, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would lose a significant number of seats if Israel held a parliamentary election now.—Reuters
