The Civil Defense of the Gaza Strip, an organization dependent on the Islamist movement Hamas, announced on Tuesday, July 16, the death of at least 44 people in three separate Israeli strikes in the center, south and north of the small besieged Palestinian territory, including one on a school. “Three massacres took place in less than an hour against displaced people,” said the spokesman for the Civil Defense in Gaza, Mahmoud Bassal, in a statement also reporting “tens” of wounded, “including serious cases.”
The strikes took place near a gas station in Al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis in the south, on a school run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the center, and near a roundabout in Beit Lahia in the north.
The Israeli army said in a statement that it had targeted “Terrorists using an UNRWA school in the Nousseirat region” et “a company leader” of Islamic Jihad “in the west of Khan Younis.” She assured that she had taken “numerous measures” to reduce the risk of hitting civilians in the strike on the school, once again accusing Hamas of hiding behind civilians and using the population as a human shield – something the Islamist movement regularly denies.
The school in the Nousseirat camp housed “thousands of displaced people”
For each of the three strikes mentioned, the Civil Defense spokesman in Gaza did not provide a detailed death toll. According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, at least five people were killed in the strike on the Al-Razi school in central Nousseirat, which housed “Thousands of people displaced” by the war. Al-Awda hospital in Nousseirat said it had admitted 48 wounded following this strike.
Seventeen others were killed in the strike that targeted a gas station in Al-Mawasi, the Health Ministry of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip said. Al-Mawasi was declared “humanitarian zone” by the Israeli army, but on Saturday, the Hebrew state targeted the head of the armed wing of Hamas in a strike that left at least 90 dead, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. By late afternoon, the toll of the strike announced on the roundabout in Beit Lahia was not clear.
French President Emmanuel Macron condemned this Tuesday “the Israeli strikes of the last few days which targeted UN schools as well as the Al-Maghazi displaced persons camp in the Gaza Strip,” in telephone conversations with several Arab leaders. The President deplored “a very large number of civilian victims” in these strikes and “recalled with the greatest firmness the imperative of respect for international humanitarian law which is imposed on Israel”, during successive discussions with his Egyptian counterpart, Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, and the King of Bahrain, Hamad Ben Issa Al-Khalifa, who currently holds the presidency of the League of Arab States.
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas on October 7, 2023, hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced as the fighting progresses, and often “several times” , according to United Nations estimates. Many are sheltering in buildings, including schools, but also the courtyards of clinics or hospitals. After nine months of war that has ravaged the Gaza Strip and in particular the enclave’s health system, the care of the very many wounded remains complex.
Update : at 9:41 p.m. with Emmanuel Macron’s reaction.
Source: www.liberation.fr
