The Palestinian resistance group, Hamas, condemned as a “new crime” on Saturday Israel's targeting of a UN agency school which shelters displaced residents in central Gaza.
“The brutal shelling carried out by the terrorist occupation army on the al-Jaouni school, run by UNRWA (UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees) and housing thousands of civilian refugees, is a massacre and a new crime committed by this criminal enemy, as part of the ongoing genocide it is waging against our Palestinian people in Gaza,” it said in a statement.
Hamas demanded that the international community and the UN “take immediate action to stop these violations and ongoing war crimes, and to take effective measures to prevent the Zionist killing machine from continuing its crimes against our defenseless people in Gaza.”
The Gaza Health Ministry stated earlier that Israeli forces committed a “massacre” at the school in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, killing 16 Palestinians and injuring 50 others.
Meanwhile, the Gaza government's media office said Israel has targeted 17 schools and shelters for displaced people within the camp since the beginning of the onslaught against the enclave on Oct. 7.
Palestinians have been using schools as shelters after their homes and residential areas were bombed during the ongoing Israeli assault.
Israel, flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire, has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7 attack by Hamas.
More than 38,000 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and over 87,700 others injured, according to local health authorities.
Nearly nine months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.
Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered it to immediately halt its military operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.
