Israeli Airstrike On Gaza School Kills At Least 80 Palestinians, Officials Say

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — An Israeli airstrike hit a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City early Saturday, killing at least 80 people, Palestinian health authorities said, in one of the deadliest strikes in the 10-month-old war between Israel and Hamas.

The Israeli military acknowledged the strike, claiming it hit a Hamas command center within the school. Hamas denied that.

The strike on the Tabeen school in central Gaza City also wounded 47 people, the Health Ministry said. The facility, like almost all of Gaza’s schools, has been used as a shelter for people who have been forced to flee their homes by the war.

Video from the scene showed walls blown out on the ground level of a large building. Concrete chunks and twisted metal lay atop the blood-soaked floor, along with clothing, toppled furniture and other debris. A blackened car with the windows blown out was covered in rubble.

Fadel Naeem, director of the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City, told The Associated Press that the facility received 70 bodies of those killed in the strike and the body parts of at least 10 others.

The strike hit without warning in the early morning before sunrise as people were praying at a mosque inside the school, according to Abu Anas, a witness who worked to rescue people.

“There were people praying, there were people washing and there were people upstairs sleeping, including children, women and old people,” he said. “The missile fell on them without warning. The first missile, and the second. We recovered them as body parts.”

Three missiles ripped through the school and the mosque inside, where about 6,000 displaced people were taking shelter from the war, said Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesperson for the Civil Defense first responders who