'Children torn to pieces': Israeli airstrike on Gaza school kills 28 displaced people
At least 28 displaced people, including women and children, have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school-turned-shelter in central Gaza, while hospitals in the north are ordered to evacuate, amid a major Israeli aggression.
The air raid targeted Rafidah School in Deir al-Balah, which was housing over 1,000 displaced people, on Thursday.
According to medics, the strike killed 28 Palestinians and wounded 54 others.
“We were sitting in peace, in front of the school,” Abu Hamza, who was taking refuge at the site, told Middle East Eye, adding that, a huge explosion “broke through three floors of the building” suddenly.
“The people took refuge here because it was meant to be safe. But there are no safe places. The Israelis are liars,” he said.
Describing the aftermath of the blast, the 34-year-old Nahed al-Zaneen, who teaches displaced children in tents near Rafidah School, said “I get out and all I see is shreds of bodies all over the floor. Heads blown up, innocent children scattered across the floor.”
“What did these children do wrong? Were these children holding missiles? Did they have guns?”
Meanwhile, an Al Jazeera reporter said that children and women “were torn to pieces by the intensity of the strike.”
“I saw with my own eyes lots of bodies that were torn to pieces, making it quite hard to identify them unless family members managed to find out who they were from some signs in their clothing in the hospital morgue,” Abu Azzoum said.
That’s while, Israeli forces have been conducting a major offensive in Jabalia refugee camp, and the nearby towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza since earlier this week.
According to Palestinian health officials, at least 130 people have so far been killed in the offensive.
The Israeli military ordered residents of Jabalia and nearby areas to relocate to the so-called “humanitarian zones” designated by Israel in southern Gaza. Still, Palestinian and UN officials say there are no safe places in the densely populated strip.
The health officials also said the Israeli military on Wednesday ordered the evacuation of Indonesian, Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals, giving patients and medics 24 hours to leave the hospitals or risk being stormed as happened earlier in the attack on Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital.
Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, said eight patients, mostly children with critical shrapnel wounds, were at risk inside intensive-care units should the military force their evacuation, and the hospital was also running out of fuel.
He called for international pressure on the occupying regime to allow medical staffers in the three hospitals to continue to operate.
"Our message is a message of peace for the sake of those children," Abu Safiya said.
Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime's decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
The regime’s bloody onslaught on Gaza has so far killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured tens of thousands of others. Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under rubble.
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