Gaza schools targeted in series of airstrikes as death toll passes 45,000
A Sunday night airstrike on a school inside a humanitarian area designated by Israel in southern Gaza has killed 15 people, including children, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Civil Defense.
Video captured the chaos as flames engulfed Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz school. People can be seen pouring out from a stairwell, including a woman carrying a child in the video. The person filming then approaches a body on the ground near the school walls as ambulances rush toward the scene. Bodies are carried from the building, as men are heard wailing in mourning.
Footage verified by ABC News from Monday morning shows Gazans painstakingly sifting through fabric and rubble for human flesh and shrapnel on the second floor of the school. The Israeli Defense Forces has not yet commented on the strike and have not responded to ABC News request for comment.
On Saturday morning, seven people were killed, including a child, and 30 people were injured in an Israeli strike on the Al-Majda Al Wasilah School complex in Gaza City, according to Gaza Civil Defense. Later in the day, 11 people were killed in a strike on the Deir al-Balah municipality building, in the "humanitarian area," which has been targeted previously, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Civil Defense.
"I do not know how I managed to walk after the scale of terror and death I saw. What's the fault of children," one woman after the strike told Reuters in a video interview.
Regarding the Saturday strike, IDF said they were targeting Hamas militants "who were operating in a command and control center embedded within a compound that previously served as" Al-Majda Al Wasilah School.
"The command and control center was used by the terrorists to plan and execute terrorist attacks against IDF troops and the State of Israel," according to the IDF. "Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, leveraging aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence information."
"The IDF will continue to operate against terrorist organizations that use humanitarian areas, including schools, as cover," the statement added.
The Hamas Government Media Office said the mayor of Deir al-Balah, Diab Al-Jarou, was killed in the strike on the municipality building. He is the fourth central Gaza mayor to be killed in Israeli strikes, after the mayors of Al Zahra, Al Maghazi, and Nuseirat, according to the Hamas Government Media Office.
The IDF claims the mayor was simultaneously a member of Hamas' military wing and that the strike was targeting him.
A series of Israeli airstrikes across Gaza through the weekend and into Monday has pushed the death toll in Gaza above 45,000, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. This accounts for more than 2% of the total Gaza population of 2.23 million people, per ministry figures, as in the 14 months since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas militants attacked Israel, killing more than 1,200 people and taking more than 200 hostages, prompting an Israeli retaliation against Palestinians in Gaza.
This comes as Israel faces accusations of ethnic cleansing in its attacks on Gaza, an accusation the IDF denies.
ABC News' Joe Simonetti and Will Gretsky contributed to this report.
