At least 20 people were killed in an Israeli attack on a UN school in Gaza, survivors say
Debris and debris fell on Salma Saud Khan while she was sleeping at the Ahmed bin Abdulaziz School in Younis.
“I felt scared and thought maybe this is it,” the 19-year-old told CBC News.
The damage is from an Israeli strike on a United Nations school. According to survivors, at least 20 internally displaced Palestinians were killed when Israel bombed the building without warning.
“My sister passed out… (and) my mother, as soon as I picked up the debris, I knew she was a martyr,” Saud said.
“Before today I lost my father … and today I lost my mother.”
According to survivors, the impact hit the building around 9:30 p.m. Many people there, including 30-year-old Khitam Al-Tarawsa, took refuge in the school after Israeli attacks forced them to flee several times.
“The children were panicking, even we adults were panicking. “We started running in the middle of the night and saw that three or four classrooms had collapsed and there were martyrs.
The strike was one of several attacks carried out by Israel over the weekend in besieged areas, including Beit Hanoun and Deir al-Balah.
Elsewhere, an airstrike hit a civilian emergency center in the Nuseyrat market area of ​​the central Gaza Strip, killing Al Jazeera TV videojournalist Ahmed Al-Louh and five other people, medical workers and fellow journalists.
According to doctors, another strike on a house in the Nuseirat camp killed 5 people, including a child.
In its new report, Amnesty International has accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza war. Israel has strongly denied this allegation and said it respects international law.
The Israeli military said it targeted sites used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants operating out of Gaza’s Civil Defense Nusairat office. But those affected by the strikes say that the vast majority of those killed are women and children.
Khaldiya Tafesh, who lost her son and 7 grandchildren in the attack on the UN school, said, “We were just sitting in our houses, innocent people in their place. Suddenly they saw the bomb falling in the middle of the room.”
“There was no will or anything.”
‘lost it all’
Al-Tarawsa and his family were moved to Nasser Hospital after the Israeli attack, but they returned to the school in the morning to assess the damage.
He said that everything was destroyed, “there is nothing in one piece, no furniture left.”
Survivors say Israel did not warn them before the attack, so most of the people in the building were asleep when the bomb went off.
“A bomb fell and we don’t know where or who was affected,” Al-Tarawsa said. “Until now, we had a headache.”
The attack left a bloody scene for survivors and medical workers. Al-Tarawsa says shrapnel from the attack hit her and her children, who were sitting near the blast site.
Elsewhere in the building, 23-year-old Bisan Azdoudi said he saw loved ones’ brains blow out of their heads.
“I lost my uncle, I lost everyone. There’s no one left for me,” he said. “I tried to get my brothers out from under the rubble. There is no one left.”
Sharif Awda says they were taking women and children to the hospital piecemeal because the strike and its effects had torn them apart.
“We had no idea they would hit this school,” he said. “If you attack an UNRWA school, you must notify them.”
Death toll over 45,000: Ministry of Health
Gaza’s health ministry put the death toll at 45,028 on Monday, with 106,962 wounded since the start of the war.
The official figure is about two percent of Gaza’s pre-war population of 2.3 million – although officials say the real toll is higher, as thousands of bodies are still buried under rubble or in places where doctors can’t reach.
Israel claims Hamas is responsible for the civilian toll because it operates from civilian areas in the densely populated Gaza Strip, but rights groups and Palestinians say Israel is not doing enough to prevent civilian deaths.
The Israeli army claims to have killed more than 17,000 militants without providing evidence. The Gaza Health Ministry does not distinguish between civilians and fighters in its numbers, but said more than half of the dead were women and children.
In addition, UN agencies, the International Committee of the Red Cross and even the United States of America in the past they used the numbers of the Ministry of Health.
With the death toll mounting, efforts to broker a ceasefire have picked up after faltering repeatedly in recent weeks. Qatar, Egypt and the United States have renewed their efforts to reach a high-level agreement in recent days. Mediators said both sides are more than willing to reach a ceasefire.
Al-Tarawsa says Israel has no energy to deal with the ongoing attacks by Hamas militants since the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. Go back to Gaza.
“We are tired of the bombings and the war,” Al-Tarawsa said.
“We live here, yes, but there is no security. We live between walls, no door is safe, no window is safe. Nothing is safe.”
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