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Israel said it had launched a “precision strike” against Hamas militants operating from a school compound in northern Gaza. Local medics said several people sheltering in tents there were killed.
Sept. 7, 2024, 6:15 a.m. ET
The Israeli military said on Saturday that it had struck a school compound in northern Gaza that Hamas was using as a base, one of several attacks reported by medics across the territory overnight.
According to Gazan rescue services, the Israeli strike, on the Halimah al-Saadiyah school in the town of Jabaliya, killed four people who had been sheltering in tents that displaced Palestinians have set up around the school.
The Israeli military said in a statement that it had carried out a “precise strike” targeting Hamas militants who were using the former school compound as a base, but did not say whether anyone had been killed. It said that “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians” before the attack, and blamed Hamas fighters for camouflaging themselves among Gaza’s civilian population.
The deaths from the latest strikes add to the more than 40,000 Palestinians who have been killed in 11 months of war, according to the Gazan health authorities. Their figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
The attack in Jabaliya was followed by a string of bombardments in northern and central Gaza, including strikes in the town of Nuseirat and in Gaza City. Children were among those killed in both those strikes, Gaza’s emergency services said.
Many schools across the embattled Gaza Strip have been turned into makeshift shelters and now house tens of thousands of Gazans trying to flee Israeli bombardment. For the enclave’s nearly two million civilians, the vast majority of whom have been displaced by fighting, United Nations officials and aid groups have said that no place in Gaza is truly safe.
Israel has vowed to strike Hamas militants wherever they are, and its military has repeatedly struck in areas that it previously told civilians to flee to.
Over recent months, Israel has ordered round after round of civilian evacuations and repeatedly shrunk the size of the enclave’s designated “humanitarian zone” in central Gaza. That has forced more and more Palestinians to squeeze into ever tighter areas, or seek shelter around places they hope to be somewhat safer, such as hospitals and schools.
Many Gazans say they know that schools — which abandoned teaching this year amid the war — are not safe from strikes. But people have continued to take shelter around them in part because the buildings have plumbing and offer at least some access to water and toilets.
