At least seven people were killed and several wounded on Sunday in an Israeli attack on a school hosting displaced Gazans in the Shati refugee camp near the northern Gaza City, according to local medical sources.
The school, Kafr Qasim, is not part of the UN refugee agency’s network of centres. But according to Gaza Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal, the centre is hosting hundreds of displaced Palestinians.
The Israeli army has acknowledged the attack, which it said was directed against a group of Hamas militants operating in the complex. As always when attacking civilian infrastructure in Gaza, Israeli forces say they have taken precautions to “minimise” damage to civilians, and have accused the Islamist group of “abusing” such buildings by using them as shelters.
The attack comes just 24 hours after Israeli forces shelled another school compound in the Gaza capital, killing 22 people, including 13 children and six women.
The bombing also left around thirty people injured and several people missing in the rubble, after two missiles hit a three-storey school building in the Zeitun neighbourhood.
Israel routinely bombs schools where displaced people take refuge, claiming they are hiding places for Hamas militants. Since October, more than 500 schools have been attacked in the devastated Palestinian enclave.
The vast majority of the enclave’s population, almost two million people, live displaced in tents or in overcrowded schools, with little access to running water, electricity or hygiene products.
Since the war began, 41,391 people have been killed and 95,760 wounded in Gaza, according to the latest figures from the Hamas-controlled enclave’s health ministry, which has warned that generators in all medical centres in the Strip could stop working within 10 days due to a lack of fuel and spare parts.
“We call on all concerned international and humanitarian institutions to intervene quickly to bring fuel, filters and spare parts for the generators,” the office said in a statement.
Source: www.eldiario.es
