DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli airstrikes across Gaza overnight and Wednesday hit a U.N. school sheltering displaced Palestinian families as well as two homes, killing at least 34 people, including 19 women and children, hospital officials said. A U.N. official said six staffers were among the dead.
The war in Gaza is now into its 11th month, with tens of thousands of people dead, and international efforts to mediate a cease-fire between Israel and the Hamas militant group have repeatedly stalled as they accuse each other of making additional and unacceptable demands.
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli troops launched raids in several towns backed by airstrikes, continuing a crackdown across the territory that the military says is targeting militants but has wrecked neighborhoods and killed civilians. One airstrike killed five people the military said were militants threatening its troops. A second strike on a car killed at least three people, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
An attacker crashed a fuel truck into a West Bank bus stop near the Israeli settlement of GIvat Assaf, killing an Israeli soldier, the military said. Officials said soldiers and an armed civilian “neutralized” the attacker.
The strike on the U.N.’s al-Jaouni Preparatory Boys School in the Nuseirat refugee camp killed at least 14, including two children and a woman, officials from Awda and al-Aqsa Martyrs hospitals said. At least 18 other people were wounded, they said.
The Israeli military said it was targeting Hamas militants planning attacks from inside the school. The claim could not be independently confirmed.
One of the children killed was the daughter of Momin Selmi, a member of Gaza’s civil defense agency, which rescues wounded and retrieves bodies after strikes, the agency said.
Palestinians stand in the courtyard of a school after an Israeli air strike hit the site, in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip on September 11, 2024. (Photo by EYAD BABA/AFP via Getty Images)
EYAD BABA via Getty Images
Gaza’s schools are packed with tens of thousands of Palestinians driven from their homes by Israeli offensives and evacuation orders. The al-Jaouni school, one of many in Gaza run by the U.N. agency for Palestinians, or UNWRA, has been hit by multiple strikes during the war.
UNRWA said six staffers aiding the displaced, including the manager of the shelter, were killed. “Humanitarian staff, premises & operations have been blatantly & unabatedly disregarded since the beginning of the war,” the agency’s director, Philippe Lazzarini, wrote on X.
Israel frequently bombs schools, saying they are being used by Hamas militants. It blames Hamas for civilian casualties from its strikes, saying its fighters base themselves and operate within dense residential neighborhoods.
More than 90% of Gaza’s school buildings have been severely or partially damaged in strikes, and more than half the schools housing displaced people have been hit, according to a survey in July by the Education Cluster,