Hamas-run ministry says Israeli strikes kill 50

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

They said the dead included children, a cameraman working for Al Jazeera television and staff from the Civil Defense agency.

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

The Hamas-run health ministry said the deaths meant the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza during the 14-month war between Israel and Hamas had surpassed 45,000.

The ministry does not make a distinction between combatants and civilians, but reported in October that 29,980 children, women and the elderly were among the identified fatalities.

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

The war began when gunmen led by Hamas carried out an unprecedented attack in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, during which around 1,200 people were killed and 251 others 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.

Chilling footage showed a bloody scene on the third floor of the Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz school, with the bodies of children apparently among those being removed.

“People were safe, they stayed in their homes after the evening prayer. They were sitting, sleeping and staying put,” Manal Tafesh, whose brother and children were among those killed, told Reuters news agency outside a premises. funeral home

Doctors said at least 13 people were killed, while a spokeswoman for the UN Palestine Refugee Agency (Unrwa) said she had heard reports of about 20 victims, many of them women and children .

“It doesn’t stop. It’s so unrelenting the pain and suffering we continue to have,” Louise Wateridge told the BBC from central Gaza.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they had “carried out a precise strike against Hamas terrorists operating inside 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.

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

The UN said it was monitoring reports that more than 1,500 people were recently displaced after Israeli forces besieged and shelled the Khalil Aweida school.

The IDF said on Sunday that its forces “conducted a raid targeting a terrorist meeting point in the Beit Hanoun area.”

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

Another strike hit a Civil Defense building in the Nuseirat urban refugee camp in central Gaza.

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

“The Israeli occupation has once again demonstrated to the world that there is no protection for humanitarian workers in Gaza or adherence to international humanitarian law,” he said, adding that 94 Civil Defense workers had died since the start of the war

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

He said Louh had been covering a Civil Defense rescue operation following an earlier strike on Sunday and arrived “a few days after his house was targeted”.

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

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

“Among the terrorists eliminated in the strike was Islamic Jihad terrorist Ahmad Bakr al-Louh, who previously served as a platoon commander in the Islamic Jihad Central Camps Brigade,” it alleged, without providing no proof

Al Jazeera did not comment on the Israeli accusation, however Louh’s cousin, Mahmoud, told the Associated Press: “We were surprised by the declaration of Israeli occupation.”

“These claims are lies and deception 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.