Dozens of Palestinians were found dead at a school in the northern Gaza Strip in black body bags tied with plastic cables bearing Hebrew writing, Middle East Eye reports.
Al Jazeera Arabic and local media reported that the bodies of 30 Palestinians were discovered at the grounds of the Khalifa bin Zayed elementary school in Beit Lahia after Israeli forces withdrew from the area.
The bodies were reportedly discovered under a mound of rubble with videos showing several of the body bags tied with white plastic zip ties, normally used for tying cables together.
It was unclear when the Palestinians were killed, but the school had served as a shelter for thousands of displaced Palestinians before it was bombed and besieged by Israeli forces in early December.
On the other hand, Israel’s army claimed to have begun flooding Hamas’s network of tunnels as intense fighting rages in Gaza, with the UN warning of the potential “collapse of the humanitarian system” in the territory after a funding row hit its Palestinian aid agency.
The epicentre of the fighting in recent weeks has been Khan Yunis, southern Gaza’s main city, where vast areas have been reduced to a muddy wasteland of bombed-out buildings, and where an AFP journalist witnessed people leaving town on Tuesday as explosions sounded nearby.
“We left the Nasser hospital without any mattresses, under tank and air strikes. We didn’t know where to go,” said one young woman.
“We’re out in the cold, left to fend for ourselves, with no tents and nothing to survive on.”
Elsewhere in the city, Israeli troops gave journalists a tour of a tunnel they said had been used as a Hamas command centre.
“Every war has its own characteristics, and I think that this war, its basic character is about that over – and underground manoeuvre,” Dan Goldfus, commander of the 98th Paratroopers Division, told reporters outside of the shaft.
“I think the enemy is on the run and is trying to put itself under the civilians as much as it can,” he added.
The Israeli military, which has dubbed the vast network of tunnels “the Gaza metro”, said Tuesday that it had begun flooding the underground complexes with water in a bid to “neutralise the threat of Hamas’ subterranean network”.
Israel’s horrifying air, land and sea offensive in Gaza has killed at least 26,751 people, mostly women and children, since October 7, 2023, when Hamas raided Israeli occupied territories along the Gaza border after suffering years of violent settler colonialism.—Agencies
