TEMPO.CO, Cairo - Israel hit a Gaza school on Thursday, June 6, with what it described as a targeted airstrike on up to 30 Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters inside, and a Hamas official said 40 people were killed including women and children sheltering at the U.N. site.
Video footage showed Palestinians hauling away bodies and scores of injured in a hospital after the attack, which took place at a sensitive moment in mediated talks on a ceasefire that would involve releasing hostages held by Hamas and some of the Palestinians held in Israeli jails.
At the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, a Palestinian boy, Imad al-Maqadmeh, lay on the floor, his swollen face badly bruised and bleeding. He said he lost his father in the strike.
"What did we do? There are no armed people in the school. The ones there are children, playing. We play together... Why did they bomb us?" he said in the video obtained by Reuters.
In images of the dead laid out at the hospital surrounded by wailing mourners, bodies were mostly wrapped in shrouds or carpets, making it impossible to determine their identities from the video.
The U.S. issued a joint statement with other countries calling on Israel and Hamas to compromise to finalize a deal after eight months of the war in the Gaza Strip.
Qatar's foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said Hamas had not yet responded to the latest ceasefire proposal and was still studying it, adding that Qatar, Egypt and the U.S. mediation efforts are still ongoing.
Hamas sources said there was nothing new to respond to, adding the Israeli proposal was old and the group rejected it because it did not speak of an end to the war or a complete pull out from Gaza.
Ismail Al-Thawabta, the director of the Hamas-run government media office, rejected Israel's assertion that the U.N. school in Nuseirat, in central Gaza, had hidden a Hamas command post.
"The occupation uses ... false fabricated stories to justify the brutal crime it conducted against dozens of displaced people," Thawabta told Reuters.
Israel's military said its fighter jets had carried out a "precise strike", and circulated satellite photos highlighting two parts of a building where it said the fighters were based.
"We're very confident in the intelligence," military spokesperson Lt Col. Peter Lerner said, accusing Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters of deliberately using U.N. facilities as operational bases.
He said 20 to 30 fighters were located in the compound, and many of them had been killed. "I'm not aware of any civilian casualties and I'd be very, very cautious of accepting anything that Hamas puts out," he said.
Later Israel's chief military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the military had so far identified nine of 30 Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters targeted in the pre-dawn strike.
As people at the school cleared rubble from bloodstained classrooms, survivor Huda Abu Dhaher described waking up to the sound of rockets.
"People's remains were scattered inside the yard and outside. The gas canister exploded," she told Reuters.
"My nephew was martyred (killed), he lost his leg and arm, he was a 10-year-old."
Washington said it expected Israel to be fully transparent in publicizing information about the strike.
"As a general matter, and as we’ve said before, Israel has a right to go after Hamas. But we’ve also been clear that Israel must take every precaution possible and do more to protect civilians," a White House National Security Council spokesperson said.
