At least 30 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike on a school sheltering people in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza on Saturday, Palestinian health officials said. The Israeli military said the strike targeted a Hamas command centre used to store weapons and plan attacks. The Gaza Health Ministry and the Hamas-run government media office gave the toll for those killed in the strike on the school in Deir al-Balah, one of the areas most populated with displaced families, and said more than 100 others were wounded.
The Israeli military said in a statement it had targeted a "Hamas command and control centre inside the Khadija school compound in central Gaza." The statement said the school was being used to launch attacks against troops and as a weapons cache and that it warned civilians before the strike. At Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, ambulances raced wounded Palestinians into the medical facility.
Some of the wounded also arrived on foot, with their clothes stained with blood. A wounded Palestinian child is carried to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the aftermath of the Israeli strike in Deir al-Balah on Saturday. (Ramadan Abed/Reuters) In previous such strikes that have hit civilian infrastructure, Israel's military has blamed the Hamas militant group for putting civilians in harm's way, accusing it of operating within densely populated neighbourhoods, schools and hospitals as cover.
Hamas denies this. Earlier on Saturday, Palestinian official media said that a.