“There are 14 martyrs and more wounded in the massacre at Al-Jouni school in the Nusseirat refugee camp” in the central Gaza Strip, Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal said. He had earlier stated that “women and children” were among the dead.
About 5,000 people on site
The Israeli military said in a statement that its air force “conducted a precision strike on terrorists operating inside a Hamas command center” in the Al-Jouni school. The press office of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip said the school, which is run by the United Nations' Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA), was housing about 5,000 displaced people at the time of the strike.
In recent months, the army has struck several schools in the Gaza Strip, accusing them of harboring Hamas command centers, which the Palestinian Islamist movement denies. Tens of thousands of displaced people have found shelter in educational institutions since the Gaza war began following an unprecedented attack by Hamas in Israel.
The war was sparked on October 7 by a Hamas attack in Israel that killed 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data. Of the 251 people abducted that day, 97 are still being held in Gaza, of whom 33 have been declared dead by the army.