DEIR ALBALA, Gaza Strip (AP) – At least 27 people were killed Thursday in an Israeli attack on a school sheltering displaced people in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical officials said. The Israeli military said it targeted militants, but those evacuated said the airstrike hit a meeting of aid workers.
Israel continues to attack suspected extremist targets across the Palestinian enclave, even as attention shifts to its war with Hezbollah in Lebanon and escalating tensions with Iran. The military launched a major air and ground operation against Hamas in northern Gaza earlier this week.
In a separate development, UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon said an Israeli tank opened fire on UN peacekeepers’ headquarters in the town of Nakoura, hitting a watchtower and injuring two peacekeepers. It was announced that he was hospitalized.
The Israeli military said it was investigating the incident.
UNIFIL said in a statement that its headquarters and nearby positions had been “repeatedly attacked.” The newspaper said the military also opened fire on a nearby bunker where peacekeepers were taking shelter, damaging vehicles and communication systems. An Israeli drone was reportedly seen flying towards the entrance to the bunker.
Strikes at shelters appear to have targeted Hamas-run police
According to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where the bodies were taken, 27 people, including one child and seven women, were killed in the attack in Deir Bala, central Gaza. Several other people were reportedly injured.
An Associated Press reporter saw an ambulance enter the hospital and counted the bodies, many of which arrived in pieces.
Without providing evidence, the Israeli military said it had carried out a precision attack targeting an extremist command and control center inside the school. Israel has repeatedly attacked schools that have been turned into shelters in the Gaza Strip, accusing militants of hiding there.
Witnesses said the strike occurred during a meeting with school administrators and representatives of aid groups in a room usually guarded by Hamas-run police. There were no police in the room at the time.
The Palestinian branch of the Swiss aid group Terre des Hommes said in a statement that one member of its child health team was killed in the strike, but did not say how many.
“There were no extremists. Hamas did not exist,” said Iftikhar Hammouda, who fled northern Gaza early in the war.
“We went to the tents. They bombed the tents… They bombed us on the streets too. In the market they bombed us. At school they bombed us. I did,” she said. “Where should I go?”
The Hamas-run government operated a civilian police force numbering tens of thousands of people. Since the start of the war, they have largely disappeared from the streets as Israel targeted them with airstrikes, but plainclothes Hamas security personnel still control most areas.
Hamas has continued to attack Israeli forces for more than a year since the Oct. 7 attack sparked the war, occasionally firing rockets at Israel.
In the attack, Hamas-led militants entered Israel and rampaged through military bases and rural areas, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting about 250 others. Approximately 100 prisoners are still being held, and one-third of them are thought to have died.
More than 42,000 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli attack, local health officials said, with more than half of the dead being women and children, although they did not say how many were fighters. The war destroyed large areas of Gaza and forced approximately 90% of the country’s population of 2.3 million to flee multiple times.
UN peacekeepers drawn into escalating fighting in Lebanon
UNIFIL has more than 10,000 peacekeepers from dozens of countries and was established to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon after Israel’s 1978 invasion. After the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, the United Nations expanded its mandate to allow peacekeepers to patrol buffer zones set up along the border.
Israel accuses Hezbollah of setting up combat facilities along the border, in violation of the United Nations Security Council resolutions that ended the 2006 war. People have been warned to evacuate from dozens of communities in southern Lebanon, many of which are outside the buffer zone.
UN peacekeepers remain in positions on Lebanon’s southern border, despite UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix asking Israel to leave some areas before launching a ground operation against Hezbollah last week. He said he was staying.
In support of Hamas and the Palestinians, Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israel on October 8, 2023, triggering Israeli airstrikes in retaliation.
The fighting has steadily escalated, eventually escalating into full-scale war in recent weeks, with Israel launching heavy attacks and ground invasions across Lebanon. Hezbollah has expanded its rocket attacks into densely populated areas deep inside Israel, causing few casualties but disrupting daily life.
Israel says the ground incursions have so far been concentrated in small areas along the border and are aimed at pushing back the insurgents so that tens of thousands of Israelis can return to their homes in the north. The fighting has displaced more than 1 million people in Lebanon.
Iran supports Hamas, Hezbollah, and other armed groups across the region that call themselves the Axis of Resistance against Israel. Iran fired about 180 ballistic missiles at Israel last week in retaliation for the killing of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders.
Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Wednesday that Israel’s response to the Iranian missile attack would be “deadly” and “surprising” as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with US President Joe Biden. However, he did not provide further details.
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Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press reporters Kareem Chehaib in Beirut and Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed.
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For more AP coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
