At least 20 killed in Israeli strike on Gaza school

RTÉ News​

26-05-2025

An Israeli strike on a school housing displaced people in Gaza killed 20 people and injured dozens, the territory's civil defence agency said.
Medics said the dozens of casualties in the strike on the school, in the Al-Daraj neighbourhood of Gaza City, included women and children.
Despite mounting international pressure that pushed Israel to lift a blockade on aid supplies in the face of warnings of looming famine, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week that Israel would control the whole of Gaza.
At the weekend, Gaza rescuers were struggling to retrieve bodies from the rubble after a series of Israeli strikes.
In one home in Jabalia, in the north, seven people were killed and several others stuck under debris, according to a civil defence spokesman.
He said the civil defence does not have the necessary search equipment or heavy equipment to recover the dead and wounded.
Two more people, including a woman who was seven months pregnant, were killed in an attack targeting tents sheltering displaced people around Nuseirat in central Gaza, he said, adding that doctors were unable to save the unborn child.
Also included in the toll were the civil defence's director of operations Ashraf Abu Nar and his wife, the spokesman added.
Fatal strikes were also recorded around Deir el-Balah in the centre of the territory, Beit Lahia in the north and the main southern city of Khan Younis.
Gaza's civil defence agency said on Saturday that a couple's nine children were killed in an Israeli strike in Khan Younis, with the Israeli army saying it was reviewing the reports.
Israel has in recent days partially eased a blockade that was imposed on 2 March and exacerbated widespread shortages of food and medicine in Gaza.
COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body that coordinates civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, said "107 trucks belonging to the UN and the international community carrying humanitarian aid ... were transferred" into Gaza yesterday.
But critics charge this is nowhere near enough, especially as many of the aid trucks end up being looted.
The World Food Programme has called on Israel "to get far greater volumes of food assistance into Gaza faster", saying, "hunger, desperation and anxiety over whether more food aid is coming is contributing to rising insecurity."
It comes as the head of a controversial US-backed group preparing to move aid into Gaza announced his abrupt resignation, adding fresh uncertainty over the effort's future.
In a statement by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, executive director Jake Wood explained that he felt compelled to leave after determining the organisation could not fulfil its mission in a way that adhered to "humanitarian principles".
The foundation, which has been based in Geneva since February, has vowed to distribute some 300 million meals in its first 90 days of operation.
But the United Nations and traditional aid agencies have already said they will not cooperate with the group, amid accusations it is working with Israel.
Israel stepped up its military operations in Gaza in early May, saying it is seeking to eliminate Hamas' military and governing capabilities and bring back the remaining hostages who were seized in October 2023.
Israel has taken control of around 77% of the enclave either through its ground forces or evacuation orders and bombardments that keep residents away from their homes, Gaza's media office said.
The Israeli campaign has devastated Gaza and pushed nearly all of its two million residents from their homes.
Israeli attacks have killed more than 53,000 people, many of them civilians, according to Gaza health authorities.
The Hamas attack on Israeli communities on 7 October 2023 killed about 1,200 people, according to AFP tallies.