A Palestinian man inspects the damage to a school sheltering displaced people after it was hit by an Israeli strike, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, at Beach refugee camp in Gaza City, September 22, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Civil defence rescuers in Gaza City said an Israeli strike on Sunday (September 22, 2024) on a school-turned-shelter killed at least seven people, with the Israeli military saying it had targeted Hamas militants.

The vast majority of the besieged Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once by the war, sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, with many seeking shelter in school buildings.

Israeli strikes on school-turned-shelters in Gaza

Civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal reported “seven martyrs and a number of wounded, including serious cases, as a result of Israeli shelling of Kafr Qasim School” in the Al-Shati refugee camp.

He said hundreds of displaced Gazans were sheltering there.

The Israeli military said it was targeting Palestinian militants operating from the school grounds, and that its forces had taken steps “to mitigate the risk of harm to uninvolved civilians” including by using “precise munitions” and surveillance.

It said the air force had “conducted a precise strike on Hamas terrorists in the northern Gaza Strip” who were “operating from a compound” at the school complex.

The military statement did not provide information on casualties.

This attack was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes on school buildings housing displaced people in Gaza, where fighting has raged for nearly a year.

On Saturday (September 21, 2024) the civil defence agency said an Israeli strike on another school-turned-shelter, also in Gaza City, had killed 21 people. The military said it was targeting militants.

School sheltering displaced people

A strike on the United Nations-run Al-Jawni School in central Gaza on September 11 drew international outcry after the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said six of its staffers were among the 18 reported fatalities.

The Israeli military accuses Hamas of hiding in school buildings where thousands of Gazans have sought shelter — a charge denied by the Palestinian militant group.

At least 41,391 Palestinians, a majority of them civilians, have been killed in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since the war began, according to data provided by the health ministry. The United Nations has acknowledged these figures as reliable.

The recent conflict resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people on the Israeli side, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, which includes hostages killed in captivity.

Out of 251 people taken hostage that day, 97 are still being held inside the Gaza Strip, including 33 who the Israeli military says are dead.