Israeli attacks have killed more than 50 people in the Gaza Strip since dawn on Monday, including 36 in a school-turned-shelter that was struck as people slept, setting their belongings ablaze, according to local health officials.
The attack on the Fahmi al-Jarjawi School in the Daraj neighbourhood of Gaza City also wounded dozens of people, said Fahmy Awad, head of the Gaza Ministry of Health’s emergency service. He said a father and his five children were among the dead.
The al-Shifa and al-Ahli hospitals in Gaza City confirmed the overall toll.
Awad said the school was hit three times while people slept. Footage circulating online showed rescue workers struggling to extinguish fires and recovering charred remains.
Palestinian Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal told the AFP news agency that the school had been sheltering “hundreds” of people, adding that those killed were mostly children and women.
The Israeli military said it targeted a command and control centre inside the school that Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad used to gather intelligence for attacks. Israel blames civilian deaths on Hamas, saying the armed group operates in residential areas.
Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim al-Khalili spoke to survivors of the attack, and resident Ahed Sameeh told him the blood on his T-shirt was that of his three-year-old daughter, whom he was carrying on his shoulders.
“She had a fractured skull,” Sameeh said. “We are nothing but defenceless peaceful civilians. We have nothing to do with the fighters and the weapons.”
Bushra Rajab recalled waking up “to the sound of people screaming and panicking” after what sounded “like a big explosion”.
“Many people were killed and many were injured. Some of those killed were my relatives,” she said. “There were too many injured people for ambulances to reach. The remains of bodies were all over the place.”
International humanitarian law forbids attacks on civilian infrastructure, including schools, but throughout its 19-month war in Gaza, Israel has repeatedly bombed schools, most of which are now being used as shelters for displaced people.
At least 50 people were killed by bombs and artillery attacks in November 2023 at al-Buraq School in Gaza City. At the nearby al-Tabin School, more than 100 people were killed as they gathered for morning prayers in August
Elsewhere on Monday, an attack on a home in Jabalia in northern Gaza killed 16 members of the same family, including five women and two children, according to al-Shifa Hospital, which received the bodies.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military said three projectiles were fired from Gaza towards southern Israel. Two landed inside Gaza and one was intercepted by Israel’s missile defence system, it said.
Fighters in Gaza still occasionally fire rockets towards Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week that Israel would carry out an intensified military campaign until it controls the whole of Gaza despite mounting international pressure on Israel to lift a blockade on aid supplies in the face of warnings of looming famine.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday that the majority of supplies of medical equipment have run out in Gaza while 42 percent of basic medicines, including painkillers, are out of stock
“We are at stock zero of close to 64 percent of medical equipment and stock zero of 43 percent of essential medicines and 42 percent of vaccines,” Hanan Balkhy, the WHO’s regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean, told reporters in Geneva.
Balkhy said the WHO has 51 aid trucks waiting on the Gaza border that have not yet been cleared to enter the Palestinian enclave, where Israel last week slightly eased a total blockade on aid imposed in early March.
“Can you imagine a surgeon [fixing] a broken bone with no anaesthesia? IV fluids, needles, bandages – they do not exist in the quantities that are required,” she said, adding that basic medications such as antibiotics, painkillers and drugs for chronic diseases were in short supply.
