Gaza City, Palestinian Territories — Gaza’s civil defense agency said at least 25 people were killed Thursday in an Israeli air strike on a school serving as a shelter for people displaced by the war.
Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP the death toll had risen to 25, with more than 100 others wounded in the strike on Dar al-Arqam School in the Al-Tuffah neighborhood, northeast of Gaza City.
It was unclear whether it was the same attack that targeted the school.
AFPTV footage from Al-Ahli hospital in the north of Gaza City showed mourners gathered around bodies laid on the floor wrapped in white shrouds.
Raed Jundia recounted surviving an Israeli strike on his home in Shujaiya.
“We were about 70 to 80 people inside the apartment when there was suddenly an explosion,” he told AFP.
Ezz al-Arqan, another Gaza City resident, said: “Every day, we wake up to the sound of bombs, shells, and bullets. How long will this continue? Every day, we wake up to 20, 30 or 40 martyrs.”
The Israeli military told residents to evacuate Shujaiya and some other districts in the Gaza’s north.
“The IDF (military) is operating with great force in your areas to destroy the terrorist infrastructure,” military spokesman Avichay Adraee said in a post on X.
“You must evacuate these areas immediately and move to the known shelters in western Gaza City.”
The Israeli military has in recent days issued a number of evacuation orders to residents in northern neighborhoods of the Gaza Strip.
On Monday, it told those living in all areas of the southern city of Rafah and parts of nearby Khan Yunis to leave.
“Currently in Rafah I can tell you that the majority of civilians have been evacuated,” said military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani.
“Our goal eventually is to have an area where we can fight Hamas, where we can fight terrorists without them hiding behind civilians,” he told journalists.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that the military was “dissecting” Gaza and seizing territory to pressure Hamas into freeing hostages.
He said the army was “taking control of the ‘Morag Axis'”, a strip of land expected to run between the southern governorates of Khan Yunis and Rafah.
Shoshani, the Israeli military spokesman, said Thursday: “The Morag Route is for us an operational route that can give us an ability to act precisely against terror.
“We know the connection between Khan Yunis and Rafah is an important one for Hamas and we’re operating to break that connection,” he added.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Thursday that 1,163 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory since Israel resumed large-scale strikes on March 18.
That took the overall toll to at least 50,523 since the war began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
