Local officials say at least 33 Palestinians have been killed and more than 100 people have been injured in three schools in which three Israeli schools house people who have been evacuated to Gaza’s Taffa district.
The Gaza government media office said in a statement that 29 people were killed, including 18 children, and more than 100 were injured when an Israeli air raid hit a school-turned-shelter in Dar Al-Al-Kham on Thursday.
The school was attacked with at least four missiles, a civil defense spokesman said.
Sources told Al Jazeera that at least four people were killed in Israeli attacks on FAHD schools in the same area of Gaza city.
Israeli forces also reportedly attacked Shaban Al-Reyes School in Tafa, but figures regarding casualties were not immediately available.
Israeli forces said Hamas fighters had attacked the Gaza city headquarters centre, where Hamas fighters were being used to plan and carry out attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers. It was unclear whether the attack was the same as targeting the school.
Israeli forces have routinely targeted shelters in Gaza Strip shelters, with nowhere to escape and are left trapped in a siege enclave.
Reported from Gaza city, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said footage from the location of the bombing at Dar Al Aqm School was “terrifying.”
“Some footage is too graphic to show – it’s scary and deeply intrusive. Many people were killed on the spot, while others were injured while being transported to Al Ali hospital by ambulance or private vehicle,” Mahmoud said.
“The tragedy once again highlights what the ‘safe zone’ that Israel described is not,” he added.
A spokesman for Gaza emergency rescue workers told Al Jazeera that the international community must immediately intervene to stop Israeli forces from killing Palestinians.
“What’s going on here is a wake-up call to the whole world. This war and these massacres against women and children must stop soon. The children are being killed in cold blood here in Gaza,” he said.
Medical sources told Al Jazeera that 71 people were killed in Gaza city, 71 people killed in the attacks in the southern part of Khan Yunis, and at least 112 people died in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.
In Gaza city, 21 bodies, including seven children, were taken to Al-Ara Arab Hospital.
Officials at Khan Younis said 14 bodies were taken to Nasser Hospital. The people killed included five children and four women.
Hospital officials said 19 more bodies, including five children, ages 1 to 7, and a pregnant woman, were taken to Europe Gaza Hospital, near Khan Eunice.
The government’s media office warned that civil defense crews are becoming increasingly difficult to take people out of tile rubs without proper equipment or vehicles, and while the medical sector is falling apart.
Israel will impose a month of siege on Gaza, sealing essential intersections, ban all humanitarian access, including food, fuel and medical supplies, leaving an acute shortage for Palestinians in Gaza, exacerbating the already tragic humanitarian catastrophe.
Looking for a shelter
Meanwhile, as Israeli forces advanced to the abandonment of Rafa, the southernmost tip of Gaza, hundreds of thousands of fugitives, one of the biggest evacuations of Thursday’s war, sought shelter.
The Israeli Army’s attacks are a massive escalation of the war after Israel broke a ceasefire with Hamas on March 18th and resumed its attack on Gaza.
Israeli forces were forced into the city on Thursday, serving as the last shelter for those fleeing other regions during the majority of the war.
“We’re gone. It’s been wiped out,” the seven fathers told Reuters. He was one of the hundreds of thousands of people who fled from Rafa to his neighbor, Khan Yunis. “They are knocking down what remains of their homes and property.”
Separately, Israeli forces issued a new order to some residents of central Gaza on Thursday, telling them to move west towards Gaza city, saying it “works with extreme force in your area.”
Many Palestinians leaving the Target area were on foot, carrying their belongings on their backs, while others used Donkey carts.
“My wife and I have been walking for three hours and cover only 1km [0.6 miles]Mohammad Hermana, 72, told The Associated Press.
“I’m looking for shelter every hour now, not every day,” he said.
Also on Thursday, Israeli forces said they were investigating the deaths of 15 Palestinian aid workers who were buried in shallow graves near Red Crescent vehicles in March.
Earlier on Thursday, Hamaslan Gaza’s Health Ministry said 1,163 people have been killed in Palestinian territory since fighting resumed on March 18 after a six-week ceasefire.
Since the start of the war in October 2023, more than 50,500 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, and at least 114,000 have been injured.
The war began after Hamas-led attacks on Israel killed 1,139 people.
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