DEIR AL BALAR, Gaza Strip — An Israeli airstrike struck a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City early Saturday, killing more than 60 people, Palestinian health officials said, in one of the deadliest airstrikes in the 10-month-old war between Israel and Hamas.
The Israeli military acknowledged the airstrike, claiming without evidence that it hit a Hamas headquarters inside the school.
According to the Ministry of Health's ambulance and emergency services, 47 people were wounded in the attack on Tabin School in central Gaza City, which, like almost all schools in Gaza, is being used as a shelter for people displaced by the war.
Abu Anas, a witness involved in the rescue operation, said the airstrike came without warning in the early hours of the morning, before sunrise, as people were offering prayers in the school's mosque.
“There were people praying, people doing laundry and people sleeping upstairs, among them children, women and old people,” he said. “The missiles fell on them without warning. The first missile, then the second missile. We found some of the bodies.”
According to the United Nations, as of July 6, 477 of the 564 schools in the Gaza Strip had been directly attacked or damaged in the war. In June, an Israeli attack on a school sheltering Palestinian refugees in the central Gaza Strip killed at least 33 people, including 12 women and children, according to local health authorities.
Israel blames Hamas for civilian deaths in Gaza and says it puts non-combatants at risk by using schools and residential areas as bases for operations and attacks.
The Israeli military confirmed that the school it attacked on Saturday was next to a mosque that was providing shelter to Gaza City residents.
The attack came as US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators renewed their efforts to help the two sides reach a ceasefire agreement that could help ease rising tensions in the region following the assassinations of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and a senior Hezbollah commander in Beirut.
According to the Gaza Strip Health Ministry, Israel's military operations in the Gaza Strip have killed more than 39,600 Palestinians and wounded over 91,700. The war began with a Hamas attack on October 7, when Gaza fighters entered southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and abducting 250.
More than 1.9 million of Gaza's pre-war population of 2.3 million have been forced to flee their homes, fleeing multiple locations across the territory to escape attacks, and most are now crammed into sparsely populated tent camps covering an area of about 50 square kilometres (22 sq mi) along the Gaza coast.
