At least 22 Palestinians, including children, were killed and several others injured on Saturday in an Israeli airstrike on a school sheltering displaced people in the Zaytoun neighborhood of Gaza City, the Gaza government media office said.
“This brutal massacre claimed the lives of 22 martyrs so far, including 13 children, 6 women, and a 3-month-old fetus,” the office said in a statement.
“Additionally, this crime resulted in 30 injuries, 9 of which were children who had limbs amputated, while the remaining injuries were severe burns. Moreover, 2 individuals are still missing,” it added.
A medical source at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City told Anadolu news agency that the victims were brought to the hospital following the strike on the school, which was housing hundreds of displaced families.
Eyewitnesses reported that the Israeli airstrike hit the Asqoula area in the Zaytoun neighborhood, causing casualties among those seeking refuge in the school.
“This horrific massacre, committed by the occupation, is part of the genocide being carried out by the Israeli occupation,” the statement continued, adding that “the number of displacement and shelter centers bombed by the occupation has reached 181.”
The office condemned Israel “for committing this horrific massacre and the ongoing massacres against civilians, children, and women.”
‘US Cover’
The Palestinian Resistance movement Hamas said in a statement on Saturday that the massacre “is a war crime under US cover.”
“The brutal Zionist airstrikes continue to target unarmed civilians in the Gaza Strip, with the criminal occupation army committing several massacres in recent hours,” the statement said.
“These ongoing and unprecedented crimes in modern history constitute a blatant violation of all humanitarian values and international laws and represent an insistence on continuing the brutal genocide in the Gaza Strip, supported by military and political cover from the U.S. administration,” Hamas continued.
Hamas called “on our Arab and Islamic peoples, all free and active forces in the nation, and all the free people of the world to unite and escalate the confrontation with this criminal enemy on all fronts and by all means, working to break the aggression and end this fascist settler project.”
Ongoing Genocide
Flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire, Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza.
Currently on trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 41,391 Palestinians have been killed, and 95,760 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
Moreover, at least 11,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire’.
Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
The Israeli war has resulted in an acute famine, mostly in northern Gaza, resulting in the death of many Palestinians, mostly children.
The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
Later in the war, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians began moving from the south to central Gaza in a constant search for safety.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
