Israeli air strikes on a girls’ school in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, killed at least 30 people and wounded over 100 others on Saturday, the Palestinian health ministry said.
Khadija Girls’ School was sheltering over 4,000 displaced Palestinians, according to civil defence officials in the enclave. A field hospital was also operating inside the school complex.
“I am so lucky to have survived,” Fadel Keshko, a 22-year-old man who was staying in the school with his sick grandmother and nephew, told Middle East Eye.
“The building I took shelter in was directly targeted. The distance between me and the rocket was just a metre away. I am horrified and terrified.”
Keshko and his relatives have since fled to Khan Younis, where the Israeli army is currently attacking areas previously designated as humanitarian zones.
“There’s nothing I can do,” he said. “I am displaced from the north of Gaza. Now, it’s another round of displacement. I don’t know where I should go.”
Israeli fighter jets fired three missiles at the field hospital in the school, the government media office in Gaza said in a statement.
The Israeli army said it hit a Hamas “command and control centre” embedded in the school, without providing any evidence.
The military has regularly used this claim to justify strikes on hospitals, schools, and other civilian infrastructures in Gaza. It has scarcely provided evidence.
Footage from the scene on Saturday showed the school floor filled with debris as rescuers attempted to take away bodies and carry wounded Palestinians.
Eyewitness Mostafa al-Rafati told MEE he saw “children, women, heads, arms, legs, a scene of ghosts”.
He described seeing the person next to him suddenly fly away the moment the strikes hit, in what he called “a horrible scene”.
“I thought I was dreaming, I kept hitting myself because I could not believe what was happening.”
More than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip since 7 October, according to Gaza’s health ministry.