Grim-faced volunteers piled corpses on blood-stained blankets into ambulances.
Gaza City:
White body bags littered the ground and mourning filled the air after a school housing displaced Palestinians was hit by Israeli missiles on Saturday – a horrific and increasingly common sight in the Gaza war.
Early morning prayers were interrupted by the triple morning airstrike by Israeli warplanes, which destroyed the religious school and Al-Tabieen mosque in Gaza City.
In the hellish aftermath, body parts were scattered across the rubble and charred and bloodied bodies fell into the wreckage of the two-story complex.
Grim-faced volunteers piled corpses on blood-stained blankets into an ambulance, while gravely injured men groaned on the ground.
Gaza’s civil defense agency said at least 93 people were killed, 17 of them women and children, making it one of the deadliest attacks of the war.
Israel’s military disputed the death toll, saying the school was targeted with “precision munitions” because it “served as an active Hamas and Islamic Jihad military installation.”
Such incidents have become a pattern in recent weeks. According to an AFP report, at least 14 schools housing displaced people from Gaza have been hit since July 6, killing more than 280 people.
“Peaceful people – women, children and youth – were performing the Fajr prayer as usual when suddenly a missile hit them,” said Abu Wassim, who lives nearby and came to inspect the site.
“They were reduced to remains. Children were torn apart and women were burned. What can we say or do? What is in our power?”
– ‘They were just praying’ –
As the sun rose and mourners gathered, a man caressed the face of a dead child wrapped in a plastic body bag.
“They launched a missile at them while they were praying. Fear God, people! Fear God, Arabs!” a woman cried over the body.
Another man looked lost as he held a small corpse wrapped in a blanket. Nearby, six body bags lay on the ground, three of them children. Tattered Qurans were piled on a window sill.
“We woke up before dawn to the sound of a strike,” said Sakr, a resident of the neighborhood who gave only one name.
“We went to the site and found the remains of civilians who were peacefully praying. We found bodies of children scattered across the streets.”
Another man said: “You can’t even recognize the bodies, there were remains scattered around.
“Those affected are displaced people taking shelter in a school. What is their fault? What did they do wrong?”
Mohammad Al-Mughayyir, director of the supply and equipment department of Gaza’s civil defense service, told AFP that six schools in Gaza City were targeted last week alone.
Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said about 20 Hamas and Islamist militants operated from the Al-Tabieen compound.
“The compound and the mosque that was hit inside it served as an active Hamas and Islamic Jihad military installation,” he posted on X.
Later on Saturday, Gaza civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told journalists that the attack “directly hit” two floors of the school.
The strike hit “the upper floor that houses women and children and the ground floor that was used for prayers by displaced people,” he said.
The war in Gaza was triggered by the Hamas attack on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP report based on official Israeli figures.
Palestinian militants captured 251 hostages, 111 of whom are still detained in Gaza, including 39 who the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 39,790 people, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, which does not provide details on civilian and militant deaths.
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