GAZA STRIP: The Israeli military claimed to have targeted a Hamas command center on Tuesday, however the Gaza civil defense service reported that at least 12 people were killed in an Israeli strike on a school converted to a shelter.
Mahmud Bassal, an agency spokesman, told AFP that “our crews retrieved 12 martyrs from the Mustafa Hafiz school, which was bombed by the Israeli occupation west of Gaza City.”
He added that thousands of Palestinians who were displaced due to the ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip had taken sanctuary in the school.
The school was targeted, according to the Israeli military, because it had a command-and-control center.
In an earlier statement, Bassal claimed that the strike had struck the school building’s second level and left seven people dead and fifteen wounded. Numerous Palestinian men and women, many of whom were carrying children, fled the scene of the strike after the school was reduced to rubble.
Six detainees’ bodies were found in a Gaza tunnel, according to Tel Aviv.
The Israeli military has attacked multiple schools in Gaza in recent weeks, mostly in Gaza City. The Palestinian organization disputes the accusations that the schools house Hamas command centers.
The military claimed that 31 fighters perished in the attack on Gaza City’s Al-Tabieen School earlier this month, however the civil defense service reported 93 Palestinians killed.
Since Hamas struck southern Israel on October 7, tens of thousands of displaced individuals have sought safety in schools. The health ministry of Gaza reports that at least 40,173 individuals have died as a result of Israel’s military onslaught in retaliation. The UN human rights office reports that women and children make up the majority of the deceased in Gaza.
Bodies Were Located
Following a skirmish with Palestinian fighters, the Israeli military reported on Tuesday that it had recovered the bodies of six captives from a tunnel in the Khan Yunis neighborhood of southern Gaza.
Yagev Buchshtab, Alexander Dancyg, Yoram Metzger, Nadav Popplewell, Chaim Perry—who had already been declared dead—and Avraham Munder—who had earlier in the day announced his death on the kibbutz of Nir Oz, close to Gaza—were among the detainees.
The military stated in a statement that the dead were discovered in a tunnel on Monday night and that their families had been notified after intelligence analysis.
The bodies were discovered in an underground tunnel that was accessible by a tunnel shaft that was discovered by the military during the operation. The shaft was approximately 10 meters (yards) deep. The statement went on to say, “The rescue was executed following protracted fighting against fighters in a populated area and in multi-story buildings, some of whom were killed.”
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a campaign group, stated in a statement that the corpses’ retrieval “grants eternal rest to the murdered and provides their families with necessary closure.”
