GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Gaza’s civil defence company reported 21 killed in an Israeli strike on Saturday (Sep 21), the most recent assault on a college sheltering displaced Palestinians the place the Israeli army stated it focused militants.
A spokesman for the civil defence company, Mahmud Bassal, stated greater than half the lifeless on the Gaza Metropolis college had been kids. Based on witnesses, a gaggle of orphans had earlier gathered on the constructing to obtain sponsorship from a neighborhood support group.
“Civil defence crews recovered (the our bodies of) 21 folks, together with 13 kids and 6 girls”, certainly one of whom was pregnant, stated Bassal.
The well being ministry within the Hamas-run Gaza Strip gave the identical loss of life toll for what the Israeli army stated was “a exact strike on terrorists who had been working inside a Hamas command-and-control centre … embedded inside” an adjoining college.
AFPTV footage confirmed the bottom flooring of the school-turned-shelter coated with concrete rubble and mangled chairs and tables, and a gaping gap within the ceiling of what seemed to be a classroom.
Hundreds of Palestinians displaced by the Israel-Hamas war had sought shelter there, Bassal stated.
There have been “round 30 injured, together with 9 kids (needing) limb amputations, because of an Israeli bombing on Al-Zeitun College C” in Gaza Metropolis, he stated.
Israel’s army stated its goal was in Al-Falah College, adjoining to the Al-Zeitun College buildings.
An AFP reporter on the scene confirmed that Al-Zeitun College C had been hit.
The army, with out mentioning the casualties reported by Gaza’s civil defence and well being ministry, stated it had taken steps “to mitigate the chance of harming civilians, together with the usage of exact munitions, aerial surveillance and extra intelligence”.
Displaced Gazan Randa al-Nadim instructed AFP she noticed a pregnant lady killed within the strike.
“Right here a girl was martyred, and that is her blood on the steps … we discovered her stomach open and the fetus on the steps,” she stated.
“Did the fetus struggle Israel?”
It was the most recent in a sequence of Israeli strikes on college buildings housing displaced folks in Gaza, the place fighting has raged on for nearly a year since Hamas’ Oct 7 assault on southern Israel.
