Israeli airstrike hits girls' school that houses displaced people in central Gaza, killing at least 30
At least 30 people were killed after Israeli airstrikes hit a girls' school that houses displaced people in central Gaza, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said Saturday.
Israel's military said it targeted a Hamas command and control center used to store weapons and plan attacks in Deir Al-Balah, one of the areas most populated with displaced families.
CBS News' team in Gaza reported many women and children were among the casualties.
The Gaza health ministry said at least 11 other people were killed in separate attacks.
The CBS News team in Gaza confirmed that there were multiple strikes in the vicinity of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al-Balah, which is near the school.
Near the hospital, an injured man lay on a stretcher on the ground. A body covered with a blanket and a dead toddler lay inside an ambulance.
Inside the school, classrooms were in ruins. People were seen searching for victims under the rubble and some were gathering remains of those who were killed.
The Gaza Health Ministry and the Hamas-run government media office said more than 100 others were wounded in the airstrikes, Reuters reported.
Deir al-Balah's Al Aqsa hospital confirmed the count to the Associated Press and CBS journalists saw the bodies.
The Israeli ministry said in a statement that it took "numerous steps" to mitigate the risk of harming civilians before the strike, "including the use of appropriate munitions, aerial surveillance and additional intelligence."
"This is a further example of the Hamas terrorist organization's systematic violation of international law and exploitation of civilian structures and population as human shields for its attacks against the State of Israel," the statement said.
Earlier Saturday, Israel's military ordered the evacuation of a part of a designated humanitarian zone in Gaza ahead of a planned strike on Khan Younis.
The evacuation order was in response to rocket fire that Israel said originated from the area. The military said it planned an operation against Hamas militants in the city, including parts of Muwasi, the crowded tent camp in an area where Israel has told thousands of Palestinians to seek refuge throughout the war.
The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said at least 53 were killed and 189 injured during the strikes in Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis.
Palestinian officials condemned the airstrikes and the United States for its "full support of the bloody massacres committed against the Palestinian people."
"The green light that (Israeli President Benjamin) Netanyahu received from the American administration made him continue his onslaught and ongoing massacres against the Palestinian people, the latest which claimed the lives of dozens of people as a result of the occupation army targeting a school sheltering thousands of displaced people in the city of Deir al-Balah," Nabil Abu Rudeineh said in a statement. "Every time the occupation bombs a school that shelters displaced persons, we see only some condemnations and denunciations that will not force the occupation to stop its bloody aggression."
Netanyahu, during a trip to the U.S. this week, met with President Biden, gave an address before Congress and met with former President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
After their meeting, the White House said in a statement that Mr. Biden had expressed to Netanyahu "the need to close the remaining gaps, finalize the deal as soon as possible, bring the hostages home, and reach a durable end to the war in Gaza."
The planned strike comes a day before officials from the U.S., Egypt, Qatar and Israel are scheduled to meet in Italy to discuss the ongoing hostage and cease-fire negotiations. CIA Director Bill Burns is expected to meet Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Abdul Rahman al-Thani, Mossad director David Barnea and Egyptian spy chief Abbas Kamel on Sunday, according to officials from the U.S. and Egypt who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to discuss the plans.
It's the second evacuation order issued in a week that has included striking part of the humanitarian zone, a 60-square-kilometer (roughly 20-square-mile) blanketed with tent camps that lack sanitation and medical facilities and have limited access to aid, United Nations and humanitarian groups say. Israel expanded the zone in May to take in people fleeing Rafah, where more than half of Gaza's population at the time had crowded.
According to Israeli estimates, about 1.8 million Palestinians are currently sheltering there after being uprooted multiple times in search of safety during Israel's punishing air and ground campaign. In November, the military said the area could still be struck and that it was "not a safe zone, but it is a safer place than any other" in Gaza.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said it was increasingly difficult to know how many people would be affected by the evacuation order because those sheltering under there were constantly being displaced.
"Referring to the orders as evacuation orders don't do any justice to what this means," said Juliette Touma, the agency's director of communications. "These are forced displacement orders. What happens is when people have these orders, they have very little time to move."
Further north, Palestinians mourned the deaths of seven killed by Israeli airstrikes overnight on Zawaida, in central Gaza. Members of two families — parents and their two children as well as a mother and her two children — were wrapped in traditional Islamic white burial shrouds as community members gathered to perform funeral rights. As men lined up to pray in front of the bodies, weeping friends and neighbors approached individually to pay their final respects.
The war in Gaza has killed more than 39,250 Palestinians, according to the territory's Health Ministry, which doesn't distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The U.N. estimated in February that some 17,000 children in the territory are now unaccompanied, and the number is likely to have grown since.
The war began with an assault by Hamas militants on southern Israel on Oct. 7 that killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostages. About 115 are still in Gaza, about a third of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.
