Israel says strike on Gaza school targets “dozens of terrorists,” but children reportedly among those killed

More than a dozen Palestinians, including children, were killed Thursday in an Israeli airstrike on a school in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, that was sheltering displaced people, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said. The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement that it had struck “a compound that previously served as the ‘Abu Hassan’ School,” where it said “dozens of terrorists from the Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations were present.”

The health ministry said at least 15 people were killed, but it did not say how many could have been militants.

The IDF published a list of a dozen names of purported terrorists it said were among those using the compound as a command and control center. It said the men “involved in rocket attacks against Israeli territory, as well as in planning and committing terrorist attacks against IDF troops and the State of Israel in recent days” were targeted in an intelligence-based “precise strike.”

The IDF did not say how many of the alleged terrorists were believed to have been killed in the attack, but it said their purported presence at the school, which like most in Gaza has been used as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the year-long war, was “a further example of the Hamas terrorist organization’s systematic abuse of civilian infrastructure in violation of international law.”

The military released photos and videos of weapons, apparently taken by troops on the ground before the Thursday strike, that it said were found inside the school building — evidence, the IDF said, of a “full combat compound.” 

Israel has recently warned Palestinians to leave northern Gaza, where its military operations have increased over the last several weeks. 

The strike came four days after the Biden administration sent a tersely worded letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, warning that humanitarian conditions in the decimated Gaza Strip must improve within a month or Israel would risk having its steady supply of American weapons and war funding cut off.

The U.S. also made clear in its letter to Israeli officials that the Biden administration was opposed to the way Israel has conducted its parallel war against Hamas’ Hezbollah allies in Lebanon in recent weeks. That assault, which Israel says is intended to halt the year-long Hezbollah barrage of rocket and drone attacks in support of Hamas, has killed more than 2,300 people in Lebanon and displaced most of the country’s population, according to the Lebanese health ministry. 

While Israel has taken steps to reverse the dramatic drop in humanitarian aid flowing into Gaza since receiving the U.S. letter, the IDF has continued pounding both Gaza and Lebanon with massive airstrikes this week, insisting it is acting in legitimate self defense.

In Gaza, the health ministry says more than 42,400 people have been killed since Israel launched its war on Hamas in response to the U.S. and Israeli-designated terrorist group’s brutal Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel.