The Hamas-run ministry says 50 people have been killed in Israeli strikes

More than 50 people were killed Sunday in Israeli air and ground attacks on the Gaza Strip, according to local medics and rescuers.

They said the dead included children, a cameraman who worked for the Al Jazeera TV channel, and employees of the Civil Defense Agency.

The Israeli military said it was targeting sites used by Hamas and the allied armed group Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The Hamas-led health ministry said the deaths brought the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza in the 14-month war between Israel and Hamas to over 45,000.

The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians, but said in October that the identified dead included 29,980 children, women and the elderly.

The figures are often disputed by the Israeli government, which claims nearly 20,000 “terrorists” were killed, but are widely accepted by UN agencies.

The war began when on October 7, 2023 militants led by Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israel, during which about 1,200 people were killed and another 251 people were taken hostage.

Many of those killed on Sunday were at a UN-run school being used as a shelter for displaced families in the southern city of Khan Younis.

The gruesome footage showed a bloody scene on the third floor of Ahmed Ibn Abdul Aziz School, with the bodies of children apparently being carried out.

“People were safe, they stayed in their houses after the noon prayer. They were sitting, sleeping and staying in their places,” Manal Tafesh, whose brother and his children were among those killed, told Reuters near the local area. mortuary

Medics said at least 13 people had died, and a spokeswoman for the UN agency for Palestine refugees (Unrwa) said she had heard reports of around 20 casualties, many of them women and children.

“It just doesn’t stop. It is such unrelenting pain and suffering that we continue to experience,” Louise Wateridge told the BBC from central Gaza.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had “struck a precision strike against Hamas terrorists operating in a command and control center” embedded in the school.

He also accused Hamas and other armed groups of exploiting civilians and using civilian infrastructure as human shields.

Medics said several more people were killed in another school-turned-shelter in the northern town of Beit Hanoun, which the UN said had been under siege by Israeli forces for more than two months.

The United Nations said it was monitoring reports that more than 1,500 people had been displaced after Israeli forces besieged and shelled the Khalil Aveid school.

The Israel Defense Forces said on Sunday that its forces “conducted a targeted raid on a terrorist gathering point in the Beit Hanun area.”

“In cooperation with the (Israeli Air Force), the troops struck dozens of terrorists from both the air and the ground, and additional terrorists were detained,” the statement added.

Another attack was made on the civil defense building in Nuseirat city refugee camp in the center of Gaza.

Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Basal said the strike killed the directors of the Nuseirat and Sheikh Radwan centers, along with two volunteers, one of whom he identified as Ahmad Baker al-Louh. Five more people were injured, three of them are in serious condition, he added.

“The Israeli occupation has once again shown the world that there is no protection for humanitarian workers in Gaza and international humanitarian law is not being followed,” he said, adding that 94 Civil Defense personnel had been killed since the war began.

Ahmad al-Law was a cameraman for Qatar’s Al Jazeera network, which strongly condemned what it called Israel’s “targeted killing” of its journalist.

It said that Luh had been covering a Civil Defense rescue operation following the early morning strike on Sunday and that it had happened “just a few days after his home was fired upon”.

“The network calls on all human rights and media organizations to condemn the systematic cold-blooded killing of journalists by the Israeli occupation, the evasion of responsibility under international humanitarian law, and to bring those responsible for this heinous crime to justice,” the statement said.

The IDF said the Civil Defense building was being used by “terrorists to plan and carry out an imminent terrorist attack against IDF forces.”

“Among the terrorists killed in the strike was Islamic Jihad terrorist Ahmad Bakr al-Luh, who previously served as a platoon commander in the Central Camps Brigade of Islamic Jihad,” the report stated without providing any evidence.

Al Jazeera did not comment on the Israeli accusations, but This was reported to the Associated Press by Luha’s cousin Mahmud: “We were stunned by the announcement of the Israeli occupation.”

“These statements are false and misleading to cover up this crime,” he added.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 137 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Israel and Lebanon since the war began.