Aug. 4 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The death toll from a series of Israeli airstrikes on two schools in Gaza City on Saturday has risen to 17 dead and 60 wounded, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.
The attacks took place on Saturday afternoon at the Hammama and Huda schools in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood in the west of the city, the agency said. Earlier, the newspaper ‘FilastÃn’ had reported a bombing of the Hammama School, identifying it as a shelter for displaced people.
The school was completely destroyed in a second Israeli army bombardment with three missiles, WAFA said, which occurred while rescue teams were working to evacuate the victims.
Following the attacks, several dead and wounded people, including children, were taken to the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City, according to a health official quoted by ‘FilastÃn’.
Israel confirmed in a statement that the attack was carried out against what it described as “a Hamas command and control centre” used by the Palestinian movement’s militias “to plan and carry out attacks against Israeli troops in the Strip.”
After saying that the attack was carried out with “precision” to minimise civilian casualties, Israel again accused Hamas of “using the population of Gaza as human shields for its terrorist activities”.
For its part, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) denounced the “criminal attack” by the Israeli “fascist occupation” on the Hamama School, a new episode of the “brutal war of extermination” against the population of Gaza, reproaching that the attack “violates all international laws by deliberately targeting civilians, including children, women and the elderly” and defends the bombing with “obvious lies.”
Health authorities in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip announced on Saturday that more than 39,500 people have died and 91,280 have been injured since the Israeli offensive launched in October against the Gaza Strip in response to attacks by the Palestinian armed group on Israeli soil, which killed 1,200 people.
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