New Delhi: Israeli Air Force fighter jets conducted a strike directed at a Hamas compound inside a United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) school in the area of Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip overnight, the IDF confirmed on Thursday.
The Israeli strike reportedly killed at least 40 people in the early hours of this morning, Al Jazeera reported, citing Gaza’s government statement.
Israeli armed forces said that the airstrike was directed by IDF intelligence and the Israel Security Agency and it eliminated terrorists who took part in the attack in southern Israel on October 7.
According to IDF, “Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists who belonged to the Nukhba Forces were operating in the compound.”
As per IDF, the terrorists used thr UNRWA school it as a shelter. Several terrorists who planned to carry out terror attacks and promote terrorist activities against IDF troops in the immediate time frame were eliminated in the strike.
Before the strike, several steps were taken to reduce the risk of harming uninvolved civilians during the strike, including conducting aerial surveillance and providing additional intelligence information.
Hamas has condemned the “massacre” committed by Israeli forces against civilians at an UNRWA school in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, and said that it was a premeditated crime.
Al Jazeera reported, citing Gaza’s government reports, that it has released a statement with more details on the victims of the Israeli air attack on Nuseirat.
According to their statement, out of the 40 people confirmed killed in the attack on a UN-run school there, fourteen were children and nine were women. Out of 74 wounded from the attack, 23 are children and 18 are women, Al Jazeera reported.
More than 36,654 people have been killed and 83,309 have been wounded in Israeli military attacks on Gaza since October 7, the enclave’s Health Ministry says. Some 68 Palestinians were killed and 235 wounded in the past 24 hours, the ministry added.
The ministry said in a statement that the number of sick and wounded Palestinians who need to leave the Gaza Strip for treatment has reached 25,000 but since May 12, about the time Israel seized the Rafah border crossing with Egypt and it closed, “no sick or wounded person has been able to leave the Gaza Strip,” as per Al Jazeera. Only 4,895 people were able to leave when the Rafah crossing was open, the ministry added.
“This exposes the lives of thousands to avoidable complications and death, and these are cases that can be treated and saved if they were allowed to go to specialised centres outside the Gaza Strip,” the statement said.