Eight Palestinians were killed on Sunday in an Israeli airstrike on a training school near Gaza City that was being used to distribute aid, according to Palestinian witnesses, as Israeli tanks continued to push into the southern city of Rafah. The attack affected part of a vocational training school run by the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), which provides aid to displaced families, according to witnesses.
“Some people came to receive coupons and others had been displaced from their homes and were taking shelter here. Some were filling water, others were receiving coupons, and suddenly we heard something fall. We ran away, those carrying water let it spill.”declared Mohammed Tafesh, one of the witnesses.
A Reuters photographer saw a low-rise building completely destroyed and bodies wrapped in blankets lying by the road, waiting to be taken away. “We pulled out the martyrs from under the rubble, one who sold cold drinks and another who sold cakes and others who distributed or received coupons,” Tafesh expressed. “There are about four or five martyrs and ten wounded. Thank God, the condition of the wounded is good”.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Juliette Touma, communications director at Unrwa, said the agency is studying the details of the reported attack before providing more information. “Since the beginning of the war, we have recorded that almost 190 of our buildings have been attacked. This is the vast majority of our buildings in Gaza,” she noted. A total of 193 Unrwa team members have been killed in the conflict, she added.
After more than eight months of Israeli war in the Palestinian enclave administered by Hamas, its advance is focused on the two areas that its forces have not yet taken: Rafah – at the southern end of the Gaza Strip – and the surroundings of Deir al -Balah, in the center. Residents said Israeli tanks advanced to the edge of the Mawasi displaced persons camp, northwest of Rafah, in fierce fighting with fighters led by Hamas, as part of an offensive to the west and north of Rafah in which Dozens of houses were destroyed in recent days.
Images of two Israeli tanks parked atop a hill overlooking the coastal area went viral on social media, but Reuters could not independently verify them. “The fighting with the resistance has been intense. The occupation forces are now dominating the Mawasi area, forcing families in the area to head to Khan Yunis,” said one resident, who asked not to be identified, in a chat application.
The Israeli military said it was continuing “targeted operations based on intelligence” in the Rafah area and had located weapons depots and tunnel shafts and killed Palestinian gunmen. The armed wings of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad movement claimed that their fighters attacked Israeli forces in Rafah with anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs and pre-planted explosive devices.
