Middle East: Gaza reports scores dead in school strike

The White House on Saturday said it was "deeply concerned" after the news of a deadly Israeli airstrike on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City.

Authorities in the Hamas-run enclave have said more than 90 people died after the strike. 

"We are deeply concerned about reports of civilian casualties in Gaza," said National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett.

"We are in touch with our Israeli counterparts, who have said they targeted senior Hamas officials, and we are asking for further details," he added.

Savett said that although Hamas uses schools and civilian infrastructure for its operations, Israel "must take measures to minimize civilian harm."

Savett said too many civilians have been killed and injured in the war, and said it is urgent to achieve a cease-fire and hostage deal.

According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, more than 38,700 people have been killed in the Israeli offensive since October 7.     

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, has condemned the Israeli strike on a Gaza school.

"Another day of horror in Gaza," he said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

"Another school hit with reports of dozens of Palestinian[s] killed among them women, children and older people," he said.

According to Palestinian authorities in Gaza, up to 100 people were killed in the strike.

He stressed that "parties to the conflict must not use schools & other civilian facilities for military or fighting purposes," adding that they must "protect civilians and civilian infrastructure at all times."

"We cannot let the unbearable become a new norm," he said.

British Foreign Minister David Lammy has condemned Israel's strike on a school in Gaza in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

"Appalled by the Israeli Military strike on al-Tabeen school and the tragic loss of life," said Lammy.

"Hamas must stop endangering civilians. Israel must comply with International Humanitarian Law," he added.

Israel has accused Hamas of hiding behind civilians in Gaza.

"We need an immediate cease-fire to protect civilians, free all hostages, and end restrictions on aid," said Lammy.

Turkey's Foreign Ministry has condemned an Israeli strike on a school in Gaza as a "crime against humanity."

"Israel has committed a new crime against humanity by massacring more than a hundred civilians who had taken refuge in a school building," the ministry said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter.

"This attack demonstrated once again that the Netanyahu government intends to sabotage the negotiations for a permanent cease-fire," it said.

The ministry said that "international actors who do not take steps to stop Israel are complicit in Israel's crimes."

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has voiced horror after seeing pictures of the aftermath of Saturday's Israeli strikes on a Gaza City school being used as a shelter by displaced people.

"Horrified by images from a sheltering school in Gaza hit by an Israeli strike, [with] reportedly dozens of Palestinian victims," he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

" At least 10 schools were targeted in the last weeks. There's no justification for these massacres," Borrell wrote. 

Israel has justified the strikes by saying it was targeting a command center of the extremist group Hamas.

Hamas has denied using the school for military purposes.

More than 90 people died in the strikes, according to Hamas-run media.

Qatar, one of the countries mediating in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza alongside Egypt and the US, has demanded an urgent probe after the Israeli strike on a school housing displaced Palestinians in Gaza City.

The Qatari Foreign Ministry said it was renewing the Gulf emirate's "demand for an urgent international investigation, including the dispatch of independent UN investigators, to ascertain the facts regarding the Israeli occupation forces' continued targeting of schools and shelters for displaced persons".
Qatar already called for such an investigation last year following Israeli strikes and raids on al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, the Palestinian territory's largest hospital.

An independent expert appointed by the United Nations to monitor the rights situation in the Palestinian territories has accused Israel of carrying out a gradual genocide of Palestinians through its Gaza offensive in the wake of Saturday's strike on a Gaza City school.

"Israel is genociding the Palestinians one neighbourhood at the time, one hospital at the time, one school at the time, one refugee camp at the time, one safe zone at the time," Francesca Albanese, said on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

Albanese, an international lawyer who was appointed as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories in 2022, already reported to the UN Human Rights Council in March that Israel was committing genocidal acts in Gaza.

At the time, Israel's diplomatic mission in Geneva called her accusations "outrageous" and said the Israeli offensive was against the Islamist group Hamas and not Palestinian civilians. 

Albanese has been accused of antisemitism and anti-Israel bias by some, but has received widespread support from rights groups and scholars as well.  

An ongoing case at the UN's International Court of Justice in The Hague, brought by South Africa, is examining whether Israel can be considered guilty of genocide. The case will take years to settle.

Egypt, a key mediator between Hamas and Israel amid the war in Gaza,  has strongly condemned Israel's Saturday attack on a school in Gaza City, saying it showed an "unprecedented disregard for international law."

The Foreign Ministry in Cairo said the attack, which Palestinian media said killed more than 90 people, was a "continuation of crimes on a large scale" in which "huge numbers of unarmed civilians" have lost their lives.

It said the strike was "clear proof" that there was no will on the part of Israel to end the war in Gaza, coming as it did while mediators were trying to bring about a cease-fire in the conflict.

Neighboring Jordan also condemned the attack, calling it a "blatant violation" of international law.

 Israel says its attack targeted a "Hamas command and control center" that had been operating from inside the school, while the extremist Islamist group says the site was being used exclusively as a shelter for people displaced by the conflict.

The claims made by the two sides cannot yet be independently verified.

Israel has said its strike on a Gaza school has killed Palestinian militants after Palestinian media reported that between 90 and 100 people who were sheltering there had been killed.

"Based on Israeli intelligence, approx. 20 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants, including senior commanders, were operating from the compound struck at the Al-Tabaeen school, using it to carry out terrorist attacks," IDF spokesperson Nadav Shoshani said on X, formerly Twitter. 

"The compound, and the mosque that was struck within it, served as an active Hamas and Islamic Jihad military facility," he added.

No evidence was provided and the claim could not be independently verified.

Hamas — whose assertions Shoshani described as "sorely unreliable" — has denied that the school was being used as a command center, with witnesses describing scenes of carnage in what the militant group said was a shelter for displaced people.

One person working to rescue people at the site, Abu Anas, told the Associated Press (AP) that the attacks came without warning before sunrise during prayers at a mosque inside the school.

"There were people praying, there were people washing and there were people upstairs sleeping, including children, women and old people," he said. "The missile fell on them without warning. The first missile, and the second. We recovered them as body parts."

Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesperson for the Civil Defense first responders who operate under the Hamas-run government, told AP that there were 6,000 people in the school taking shelter from the conflict.

The ongoing Israeli offensive in Gaza is in response to an attack in southern Israel on October 7 by Hamas and associated militants in which some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed, and 250 taken hostage.

Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization by Israel, the US and Germany among others. Israel is being investigated over claims of war crimes and genocide committed during its operations in Gaza.

The UN has reported that 477 out of the 564 schools in Gaza, as of July 6, have been directly hit or damaged in the most recent conflict.

The tally of people killed in three Israeli airstrikes on the school in Gaza City may well rise, with several still unaccounted for, according to DW correspondent Rebecca Ritters.

"It certainly looks as though the death toll may rise, as there are many people reportedly trapped under the rubble," she said.

The death toll given by Hamas authorities so far stands at 90-100 people.

Ritters said claims by Israel to have taken steps to avoid civilian casualties with a precise attack stood in contrast to the images emerging in the aftermath of the strikes.

She said the justification used by the Israeli military for such strikes on schools and hospitals — that such sites were being used as command centers by militants or to launch attacks on Israel — was "more often than not" supported by "very little evidence," adding that it was very difficult to verify the claims amid the ongoing conflict.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has told Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant that any escalation of the war in Gaza into the broader Middle East would be counterproductive for all involved.

"The Secretary reaffirmed the United States' ironclad commitment to Israel's security and discussed how escalation is in no party's interest," the State Department said in a statement released after a phone call between the two.

Blinken stressed the "urgent need to reach a cease-fire in Gaza" that could release hostages held in the enclave and "create the conditions for broader regional stability," the statement added.

 Fears of a full-fledged regional war in the Middle East have grown since the recent killings of Palestinian Islamist group Hamas' leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran and Hezbollah military commander Fouad Shukr in Lebanon.

The two deaths have drawn threats of retaliation against Israel, notably from Iran, although that country was not explicitly mentioned in the statement. 
 

Authorities in Gaza said an Israeli strike on a Gaza City school being used as a shelter for displaced people killed scores early on Saturday. 

The official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported between 90 and 100 dead, and Gaza civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told the AFP news agency that the death toll was between 90 and 100. 

The civil defense agency spoke of a "horrific massacre" and said some bodies caught fire.

Bassal said three Israeli rockets hit the facility in Daraj in eastern Gaza City. 

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), meanwhile, said it had struck "terrorists operating within a Hamas command and control center embedded within" a school. 

The IDF accused Hamas of "systematically" using civilians "as a human shield for terrorist activity." It also claimed that it had taken several steps to try to limit the possibility of civilian casualties. 

The area, near a mosque in the Daraj district of eastern Gaza City, was being used as a shelter for displaced Palestinians. 

US Central Command said in an update online that its forces destroyed an Iranian-backed Houthi missile launcher and an uncrewed surface vessel in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen on Friday. 

It also said its forces destroyed two uncrewed aerial vehicles, over the Red Sea. 

"These weapons presented a clear and imminent threat to US and coalition forces, and merchant vessels in the region," CENTCOM said.

CENTCOM is operating in the area to try to prevent Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, which the group says is a response to Israel's military campaign in Gaza. 

tj,msh/sms,ab (AP, AFP, Reuters, DPA)