GAZA STRIP: An Israeli air strike on Wednesday hit a central Gaza school, with the Hamas-run territory’s civil defence agency reporting 14 killed in the facility-turned-displacement shelter. The vast majority of the Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once by the conflict. The Al Jawni school in central Gaza’s Nuseirat, already hit several times during the conflict, was struck again on Wednesday, civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said. “The number of martyrs has risen to 14,” he said, updating an earlier toll of 10 killed in the “Israeli bombing of Al Jawni school” which also wounded numerous people.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said rescue crews had recovered five bodies at the site and had transferred them to hospital. Entrances and exits from Tubas were sealed off and Israeli military vehicles, including road diggers and armoured personnel carriers, could be seen moving through the city, close to the border with Jordan at the northern end of the West Bank. Heavy clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters have been reported, while streets and infrastructure in all three cities have suffered extensive damage as Israeli forces have dug up roads and destroyed houses.

A medical source at Nuseirat’s Al Awda health centre in central Gaza said that 15 people killed in the strike had been brought to hospitals in the area. Nine were brought to Al Awda, and six to Al Aqsa Martyrs’s Hospital, in the central Gaza city of Deir el-Balah.

Published in Dawn, September 12th, 2024