Israel confirms eight more Hamas and Islamic Jihad members killed in attack on UNRWA school

June 7 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The Israeli Army confirmed this Friday that another eight members of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and Islamic Jihad died after a bombing against a school of the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in the Nuseirat refugee camp, in the center of the Gaza Strip.

As reported by the Army in a statement, the number of dead “terrorists” amounts to 17. Many of them participated in the attacks on October 7. Israel has previously indicated that at least 30 militants were hiding in three classes at the school.

Authorities in the enclave, controlled by Hamas, confirmed at least 40 Palestinians killed in the attack, including 14 children. “The Israeli occupation Army has committed these massacres repeatedly and brutally and even though it knew of the presence of tens of thousands of displaced people in these centers,” they denounced.

The Nuseirat camp, created in 1970, housed some 80,200 refugees before the outbreak of the conflict, according to UNRWA data, and houses 15 school buildings, a food distribution center, two health centers, two social services offices and a maintenance and sanitation office.

The camp, like those of Bureij and Maghazi, is in the center of the Gaza Strip – in the province of Deir al Balá -. Both the city of Deir al-Balah and the Bureij camp have been targeted since Tuesday by a new Israeli military operation with the declared objective of destroying Hamas’ “terrorist infrastructure.”

The Israeli Army already engaged in clashes with Hamas in Bureij in January, although until now it had not launched a ground operation against Deir al-Balá, which was nevertheless the target of numerous bombings within the framework of the offensive unleashed against the enclave after the attacks carried out on October 7 by Hamas and other Palestinian factions, which left some 1,200 dead and nearly 240 kidnapped.