Israel kills over 100 displaced Palestinians in strike on school in Gaza City

Israeli Occupation forces killed more than 100 Palestinians, including 11 children, and wounded around 170 more in an attack in Gaza City at dawn on Saturday on a building in the Tabaeen school, which has been used as a center for displaced Palestinians.

The attack is the latest in a series of recent Israeli strikes targeting areas and centers, including schools and hospitals, where Palestinians have been displaced due to the Occupation military’s invasion of Gaza. Eyewitnesses told Mada Masr the victims were targeted as they gathered to perform the dawn prayer.

The school building hit with three Israeli missiles was made up of two floors, one used as a prayer room and the other used to house displaced women and children, Gaza’s Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal told Mada Masr.

Occupation forces bombed the school building during dawn prayer, a time when men, women and children were gathered in the prayer room, an eyewitness who lives near the school told Mada Masr.

The witness described arriving at the school to see “an unbearably horrific scene,” with the remains of the worshippers scattered everywhere. An even more horrific scene faced the witness as they entered the floor, where the remains of bodies were strewn indiscriminately across what was left of the prayer room.

“I was walking among the bodies to collect the remains, not knowing where to start. Heads were scattered here and there,” said the witness, who tried to help evacuate the bodies and the injured. “The scene looked like the horrors of the Day of Judgment. Some of the injured people I tried to retrieve had their skin falling off their bodies. Some of the injured were carrying parts of their shattered bodies in their hands,” the eyewitness added.

Another eyewitness who has been staying in Tabaeen said she saw two strikes hit the building during the first rakaah of dawn prayer, during which many had gathered inside the prayer room.

The eyewitness reported that Israeli reconnaissance planes were circling the area throughout the night, with the sound of warplanes occasionally overhead. They emphasized that the military deliberately waited until the prayer hall was filled with worshippers before launching the attack.

The eyewitness, who lost their father and brother in the attack, explained that the victims were all civilians from 300 families — nearly 2,000 people, mostly women and children — who fled to Tabaeen from different parts of Gaza City after their homes were destroyed by Israel.

Nearly 100 bodies have been transferred to Baptist Hospital since dawn, hospital director Fadl Naeem told Mada Masr. He reported that around 80 of the bodies have been identified, while more than 20 remain unidentified as the strike caused severe cases of dismemberment.

Basal explained that the work to exhume the bodies is still ongoing but challenging due to the victims’ scattered remains and the fact that the strikes caused a massive crater and buried several bodies deep under the rubble.

According to Naeem, dealing with the wounded has also been difficult. Most of those injured are suffering from severe burns, mostly concentrated in the victims’ upper bodies, such as their heads or chests, while some had to undergo dangerous amputations. He also noted that most of the wounded suffered internal tissue damage, which means the attack’s death toll will likely rise in the coming days or even within the coming hours.

Echoing the justification it routinely uses for attacks on civilian areas — justifications that contravene international law as Israel is an occupying power — the Occupation military claimed the school was a headquarters for 20 members of the Hamas and the Islamic Jihad resistance factions. The Occupation military spokesperson also impugned the reported number of victims, claiming the necessary measures were taken to reduce civilian casualties and that “smart weapons” were used in the strike, which was based on intelligence information.

Hamas denounced the massacre as an escalation by “the neo-Nazis” against the Palestinian people, stressing that if it were not for the United States’ military and financial support for the Israeli war machine, the massacres would not have continued. A statement by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine also stressed that the massacres against Palestinians are taking place in light of US complicity and international silence.

The massacre comes hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a delegation to attend the negotiations that the US, Qatar and Egypt called for in a tripartite statement on Friday — a call that received widespread international support.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah said the massacre is evidence that setting a date for negotiations and the talks around a ceasefire are nothing but lies. Israel has been stalling negotiations for a hostage deal and a ceasefire in Gaza for months as it refuses to put a full halt to its war on Gaza. Talks have only been further complicated by the assassination of Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh.

In the Arab world, the Tabaeen massacre, like all the others committed by the Occupation over the course of the past ten months, sparked immediate condemnations, most notably an Egyptian statement denouncing the massacre in the “strongest terms,” considering these crimes a sign of disregard for international law and calling for a unified international position to protect the Palestinian people. The Jordanian, Qatari, Emirati, Kuwaiti and Saudi statements were no different. Only Oman stressed “the Palestinian people’s right to defend themselves.”

Internationally, the images of the massacre horrified the European Union's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, who reiterated the call for an immediate ceasefire in a statement online, stressing that there was no justification for such massacres. Statements of condemnation and shock followed from the foreign ministries of Belgium, Turkey and Russia, accompanied by calls for a ceasefire.

United Nations Relief and Works Agency Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini described the massacre as a new day of horror in the strip, saying, “The more recurrent [the horrors], the more we lose our collective humanity.”

Occupation forces have targeted 13 centers sheltering displaced Palestinians since the beginning of August, according to sources in the strip quoted by the Palestinian News and Information Agency, Wafa, while Borrell said that 10 schools for the displaced were targeted within one week.

The Israeli onslaught on Gaza continues for the 309th day, killing at least 39,800 people to date and wounding nearly 92,000, in addition to thousands who are still missing or trapped under the rubble.