Palestinian medical officials said that an Israeli raid on a school housing displaced people in the Gaza Strip killed at least 27 people on Thursday. The Israeli military said it targeted activists, but people sheltering there said the strike hit a meeting of aid workers.
Israel has continued to strike what it says are armed targets across the Palestinian enclave, even as attention turns to its war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and tensions with Iran rise. The army launched a large-scale air and ground operation against Hamas in northern Gaza earlier this week.
In a separate development, the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon said that an Israeli tank opened fire on its headquarters in the town of Naqoura, hitting a watchtower and wounding two peacekeepers, who were taken to hospital. The attack sparked widespread condemnation and prompted the Italian Ministry of Defense to summon the Israeli ambassador in protest.
The Israeli army said it was investigating the incident.
The United Nations peacekeeping mission known as UNIFIL said in a statement that its headquarters and sites near it were “repeatedly bombed.” She added that the Israeli army also opened fire on a nearby bunker where peacekeepers were sheltering, damaging vehicles and a communications system. She added that an Israeli drone was seen flying towards the entrance to the hideout.
These reports came as the Israeli army continued to bomb Hezbollah targets in Lebanon while the militant group continued its rocket attacks, triggering sirens in parts of northern Israel.
The Lebanese Ministry of Health said that an Israeli air strike on Thursday killed at least four people and wounded 17 others in the village of Karak in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli army.
The aid group says the staff were killed in a raid on the school
The attack on the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza killed 27 people, including a child and seven women, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where the bodies were transferred. She added that several other people were injured.
An Associated Press reporter watched ambulances stream into the hospital and counted bodies, many of them in pieces.
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The Israeli army said that it carried out a precise strike targeting a command and control center inside the school, without providing evidence. Israel has repeatedly attacked schools that were turned into shelters in Gaza, and accused activists of taking shelter there.
Witnesses said the raid occurred while school principals were meeting with representatives of an aid organization in a room usually used by the Hamas-run police, which provides security. They said there were no police in the room at the time.
The Palestinian branch of Terre des Hommes, a Swiss relief organization, said in a statement that members of one of its children’s health teams were killed in the raid, although it did not specify their number.
“There were no militants. There was no Hamas,” said Iftikhar Hamouda, who fled northern Gaza earlier in the war.
“We went to the tents. They bombed the tents… In the streets they bombed us. In the markets they bombed us. “They bombed us in the schools,” she said. “Where should we go?”
The Hamas-run government operated a civilian police force numbering in the tens of thousands. They largely disappeared from the streets after the start of the war when Israel targeted them with airstrikes, but plainclothes Hamas security personnel still control most areas.
Hamas continued to launch attacks on Israeli forces and occasionally fire rockets into Israel more than a year after the October 7 Palestinian militant attack on southern Israel that ignited the conflict.
Militants stormed Israel in this attack, killing about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and kidnapping about 250 others. They still hold about 100 prisoners, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
The Israeli attack led to the deaths of more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who did not mention the number of fighters but said that women and children constituted more than half of the dead. The war has devastated large areas of Gaza and displaced about 90% of its population of 2.3 million, often several times over.
UN peacekeepers are caught up in heavy fighting in Lebanon
UNIFIL, which includes more than 10,000 peacekeepers from dozens of countries, was formed to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon after the 1978 Israeli invasion. The United Nations expanded its mission in the wake of the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, allowing UNIFIL to Peace by patrolling a buffer zone set up along the border.
The European Union’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, strongly condemned the Israeli strikes on UNIFIL forces, describing them as “an unacceptable act, for which there is no justification.”
“Another line has been dangerously crossed in Lebanon,” he wrote on the social media platform X.
From Italy, which has about 1,000 soldiers deployed as part of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said that her government had officially protested to the Israeli authorities. Meloni said she received updates from the Italian contingent and praised the peacekeepers for their “valuable work.”
The Jordanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also condemned the Israeli strikes on peacekeeping forces, describing them as a “dangerous escalation” and a “flagrant violation of international law.”
Israel accuses Hezbollah of setting up armed infrastructure along the border in violation of the UN Security Council resolution that ended the 2006 war. It has advised people to evacuate dozens of residential communities in southern Lebanon, many of which lie outside the buffer zone.
Jean-Pierre Lacroix, commander of the United Nations peacekeeping forces, said last week that peacekeeping forces remain in their positions on Lebanon’s southern border despite Israel’s request to evacuate some areas before it launches its ground operation against Hezbollah.
Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel on October 8, 2023, in support of Hamas and the Palestinians, prompting Israeli airstrikes in response.
The fighting has steadily escalated, eventually turning into an all-out war in recent weeks, as Israel carried out waves of violent strikes across Lebanon and launched a ground invasion. Hezbollah expanded its rocket fire into more densely populated areas deep inside Israel, causing a small number of casualties but disrupting daily life.
Israel says the ground invasion, which has so far focused on a narrow strip along the border, is aimed at repelling militants so that tens of thousands of Israelis can return to their homes in the north. The fighting led to the displacement of more than one million people in Lebanon.
Iran supports Hamas, Hezbollah and other armed groups across the region that refer to themselves as the Axis of Resistance against Israel. Iran launched about 180 ballistic missiles at Israel last week in response to the killing of prominent leaders in Hamas and Hezbollah.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant said on Wednesday that its response to the Iranian missile attack would be “deadly” and “surprising,” without providing further details, during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conversation with President Joe Biden.
Associated Press writers Karim Chehayeb in Beirut and Melanie Liedman in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.
