The Israeli-controlled Golan Heights school destroyed by a rocket strike on Saturday morning: Palestinians and Israeli civilians fleeing a Gazan school
On the same day that a school building in Gaza was destroyed, a rocket hit a sports complex filled with children playing soccer in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights region.
The airstrike in central Gaza was the latest to shatter a school used to shelter displaced Palestinian residents Saturday morning, killing 30 and wounding more than 100. Many of the people dead were children, according to the Gazan Health Ministry.
The school was located in the central Gazan city of Deir al-Balah, where many Palestinians have fled after being ordered to do so by the Israeli military.
The blood was everywhere as the residents of the building tried to flee, with pieces of flesh visible on the stairs, according to Anas Baba, an NPR reporter who witnessed the aftermath.
Wounded children were carried away afterward on donkey carts, video captured by Baba showed, with bodies borne aloft by makeshift stretchers built from pieces of debris. In nearby hospitals, Baba found hallways lined with bodies, several of them clearly very young children.
Gazan health authorities say that part of the targeted site was being used as a field hospital, and that the crowded school complex had around 4,000 people shelter there. No warning was given before the strike took place.
More than two million people in Gaza are being told to leave the territory, and the United Nations thinks more than 80% of them are doing so.
Israel Embraces in the Druze Valley: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Security Minister Netanyahu after the Hamas-Sparked Gaza War
Later Saturday, the Israeli ambulance service said a rocket launched from southern Lebanon killed 11 children, with around 30 injured, several of those very seriously.
The rocket was launched from Chebaa and the Israeli military blamed Hezbollah for the deaths. The group denied responsibility after it was designated a terrorist organization.
A spokesperson for the Israeli military, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said it was the deadliest single attack on an Israeli target since Oct. 7, the date of the Hamas-led attack on Israel that sparked the current war in Gaza.
The incident has prompted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was briefed on the situation while in Washington, D.C., to return to Israel from the U.S. earlier than planned. He will convene a cabinet meeting of his top political allies and security officials upon his return.
In a statement issued by his office, Netanyahu said the entire nation of Israel embraced the children’s families and “the entire Druze community in its difficult hour, which is also our difficult hour.”
After months of skirmishes, alongside artillery, airstrikes and rocket attacks that have been traded back and forth across Israel’s border with Lebanon, many analysts and regional leaders have expressed concerns about a significant military escalation between Hezbollah and the Israel military.
Netanyahu warned the State of Israel that it would not tolerate the incident going undiscovered despite a message from Hezbollah, which categorically denied involvement. We will not overlook this.”
Hezbollah’s denial showed that it was not responsible, and confirmed its commitment to avoiding violence against civilians, according to the parliamentary speaker of Lebanon.
The Lebanese government said the targeting of civilians is a “violation of international law” and that it condemned “all acts of violence and attacks against all civilians.”
Israeli strike on a Gaza school as a shelter: “At least 30 dead in Gaza”, a source at the Associated Press
Associated Press journalists saw a dead toddler in an ambulance and bodies covered with blankets. The classrooms were destroyed and the broken walls were agape. People were searching for victims in rubble that was strewn with pillows.
An ongoing cease-fire negotiations between the US, Israel and Egypt are likely to be discussed at a meeting in Italy on Sunday. It is said that Bill Burns, the director of the CIA is expected to meet the Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Abdul Rahman al-Thani, Mossad director David Barnea, and Egyptian spy chief Abbas Kamel.
The basic framework of the three-phase deal was said to be agreed upon by Israel and Hamas. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, in his speech to Congress said that the war would go on as long as he was in charge.
The speech was denounced by Palestinian officials after the Israeli strike on the school. Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesperson for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said in a statement that Netanyahu’s reception from supporters in the U.S. constituted a “green light” to continue Israel’s offensive.
He said that despite some condemnations and denunciations, the occupation continues to bomb a school that shelters displaced persons.
The military said it planned an operation against Hamas militants in the city, including parts of Muwasi, the crowded tent camp in an area where Israel has told thousands of Palestinians to seek refuge.
Gaza Health Ministry officials said the evacuation orders had forced at least three health centers to stop providing care and compounded issues such as piled-up waste and shortages of supplies.
Source: At least 30 dead in Gaza after an Israeli airstrike hits a school used as a shelter
Gaza is not a safer place than any other: Palestinians mourn in the wake of Israeli air strikes on the Zawaida area and in the Gaza Strip
According to Israeli estimates, about 1.8 million Palestinians shelter in the zone after being uprooted multiple times during Israel’s punishing air and ground campaign. In November, the military said the area could still be struck and that it was “not a safe zone, but it is a safer place than any other” in Gaza.
“These are forced displacement orders,” said Juliette Touma, the agency’s director of communications. People have very little time to move when they have orders.
Farther north, Palestinians mourned seven killed by Israeli airstrikes overnight on Zawaida, in central Gaza. Parents and their two children and a mother and her two children were wrapped in white burial shrouds as friends and neighbors wept.
A 17-year-old boy was killed and nine other people were wounded in an Israeli strike in the West Bank. The Israeli military said that one of their aircraft was attacked from the air in Nablus.
More than a thousand people, most of them civilians, died in an attack on southern Israel by Hamas on October 7. About 115 are still in Gaza, about a third of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.
