Gaza, new school massacre: 20 dead, mostly children

IDF speaks of ‘Hamas command centre’, but with this justification almost everything in Gaza has been razed to the ground: thousands of civilians killed

A new Israeli bombardment hit a school in the Al-Daraj neighbourhood of Gaza City, leaving at least 20 dead, mostly children, and over 60 injured. The building, the Fahmi Al-Jarjawi School, housed hundreds of displaced people and had become one of many makeshift shelters in a city that had been devastated.

The spokesman for the Strip’s Civil Defence, Mahmud Bassal, denounced to Afp ‘a horrific massacre by the occupation’, speaking of ‘at least 20 martyrs, most of them children’ being transported to hospital and dozens of wounded.

Once again, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) justify the raid with the presence of ‘key terrorists’ inside the building. According to the army, the school was used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad as a command and control centre to plan attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF troops.

A narrative that has been repeated for months: every building hit – houses, hospitals, mosques, schools – is described as the enemy’s operational base. It is with this logic that, in the name of the fight against Hamas, entire neighbourhoods have been razed to the ground and tens of thousands of civilians killed.

The Israeli army claims to have used precision munitions and surveillance systems to ‘mitigate’ the risk to civilians, but the toll on the population of Gaza tells another reality: that of an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, where nowhere – not even a school full of children – is safe any more.

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(Photo: © AndKronos)