Israeli attack on a school in the Gaza Strip, which the military says was used by Hamas, leaves 30 dead

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — An Israeli attack early Thursday on a school converted into a makeshift shelter in central Gaza that the military said was being used as a “Hamas compound” killed at least 30 people, including five children, according to local health officials.

The attack came after the military announced new air and ground operations in central Gaza and an international medical aid group reported rising casualty numbers. The latest operations appear to mark an expansion of Israel’s nearly eight-month offensive, which began after the October 7 Hamas attack.

At least 30 people were found dead in the school attack and another six in a separate attack on a residential building at Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in Deir al-Balah, according to hospital records and an Associated Press reporter at the hospital. Hamas-controlled media had previously reported a higher death toll from the school attack.

The Israeli military said its fighter jets attacked the school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). The Israeli military claimed, without immediately providing evidence, that Hamas and Islamic Jihad were using the school as a cover for their operations.

Since the beginning of the war, which led to the flight of a large proportion of the area’s 2.3 million Palestinians, UNRWA schools throughout the Gaza Strip have served as emergency shelters.

“A number of steps were taken prior to the attack to reduce the risk of harm to innocent civilians during the attack, including conducting aerial surveillance and gathering additional intelligence,” the Israeli military said.

Both attacks occurred in Nuseirat, one of several refugee camps in Gaza that date back to the 1948 war for the founding of Israelwhen hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes, which later became the new state.

The latest war began with Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, in which the militants killed around 1,200 people and took another 250 hostage. According to the Gaza Strip’s Health Ministry, at least 36,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive. In its figures, the ministry makes no distinction between fighters and civilians.

The United States has thrown its weight into the balance a gradual ceasefire and the release of the hostages President Joe Biden laid out his plans last week, but Israel says it will not end the war without destroying Hamas, while the militant group demands a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces.

The military said on Wednesday that forces were operating “both above and underground” in eastern parts of Deir al-Balah and the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza. It said the operation began with air strikes on militants’ infrastructure, after which troops launched a “targeted daylight operation” in both areas.

Doctors Without Borders said at least 70 bodies and 300 injured people, mostly women and children, were brought to a hospital in central Gaza on Tuesday and Wednesday following a wave of Israeli attacks.

The international aid organization said in a post on X on Wednesday that Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital was overwhelmed with treating a “huge influx of patients, many of whom are arriving with severe burns, shrapnel wounds, broken bones and other traumatic injuries.”

The Gaza Strip’s health system has almost collapsed after almost eight months of war. The hospital, which treated around 700 wounded and sick before the recent attacks, announced on Wednesday that one of its two generators had stopped working, jeopardizing the hospital’s ability to continue operating ventilators and incubators for premature babies.

Israel has carried out regular air strikes on all parts of the Gaza Strip since the war began and has conducted massive ground operations in the territory’s two largest cities, Gaza City and Khan Younis, leaving large parts of it in ruins.

The military launched an offensive in Bureij and several other nearby refugee camps in central Gaza for several weeks earlier this year.

Last Friday, troops withdrew from the Jabaliya camp in northern Gaza after weeks of fighting caused widespread destruction. Rescue workers have recovered the bodies of 360 people, most of them women and children, killed during the fighting.

Israel sent troops to Rafah last month, ostensibly to carry out limited attacks, but those forces are now operating in central parts of Gaza’s southernmost city. Since the operation began, more than a million people have fled Rafah, many of them heading for central Gaza.