IDF says strike hit Hamas command room housed in container at Gaza City UN school
The Israel Defense Forces said Friday that they had carried out an airstrike on a Hamas command center that had been set up in a United Nations school in Gaza City’s Shati neighborhood, killing several members of the cell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The strike comes a day after the IDF hit another UN school housing what it said was a compound used by dozens of terror operatives. The IDF on Friday also released the identities of another eight Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives who were among those killed in that strike, bringing the number of named terror operatives so far to to 17.
According to the IDF, the Hamas members killed in the Friday strike had been operating from inside a container on the grounds of the Asmaa School, which is run by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
The container was being used as a command room by the operatives and a meeting point for members of the terror group’s internal security forces, the IDF said, noting that the operatives killed on Friday had been planning attacks against Israeli forces in Gaza in the “immediate timeframe.”
The IDF did not specify how many Hamas operatives were killed, or whether any civilians were killed in the strike.
WAFA, the Palestinian Authority news agency, cited local medics as saying that at least 15 Palestinians were killed at the Asmaa school, and at least 15 more were injured and taken to Gaza City’s al-Ahli Hospital.
A graphic issued by the IDF in the aftermath of a strike at the Asmaa school run by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), in the Shati camp west of Gaza City on June 7, 2024. The IDF says a Hamas cell was operating from the container (Israel Defense Forces)
The IDF said that before the strike it had carried out “many steps to reduce the chance of harming civilians,” and the strike itself was carried out using “precision munitions.”
The IDF said Hamas was taking advantage of the school for terror activity, and it “systematically, intentionally and strategically places its infrastructure and operates from within civilian areas, in complete violation of international law and while putting the lives of [Palestinian civilians] at risk.”
The strike on the northern Gaza Strip school came a day after the IDF struck another UNRWA-run school, in central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, where the army said 30 Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad gunmen were assembled in three classrooms. The classrooms were separate from a compound where Palestinian civilians were taking shelter, the army said.
According to the IDF, some of the operatives it killed had taken part in the October 7 onslaught, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill nearly 1,200 people and take over 250 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza. bcx bcx bcx bcx bcx bcx bcx bcx bcx bcx bcx bcx bcx bcx bcx bcx bcx bcx bcx bcx bcx bcx bcx bcx bcx
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