Israeli airstrike on a Gaza school used as a shelter kills at least 80, Palestinian officials say
Israeli airstrike hit a school-turned-shelter in Gaza early Saturday, killing at least 80 people, Palestinian health authorities said, in one of the deadliest strikes in the 10-month-old war between Israel and Hamas. The Israeli military acknowledged it targeted the Tabeen school in central Gaza City, claiming it hit a Hamas command centre within the school. Hamas denied that.
The United Nations said the latest strike was part of Israel's increasing attacks on Gaza's schools, which have been turned into shelters for people who have been forced to flee their homes by the war.
Video from the scene showed walls blown out on the ground level of a large building. Concrete chunks and twisted metal lay atop the blood-soaked floor, along with clothing, toppled furniture and other debris. A blackened car with the windows blown out was covered in rubble.
Fadel Naeem, director of the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City, told The Associated Press that the facility received 70 bodies of those killed in the strike and the body parts of at least 10 others. The Health Ministry said another 47 people were wounded.
Naeem said some of the wounded had severe burns and many had to have limbs amputated.
«We received some of the most serious injuries we encountered during the war,» he said.
The strike hit without warning in the early morning before sunrise as people were praying at a mosque inside the school, according to Abu Anas, a witness who worked to rescue people.
«There were people praying, there were people washing and there were
