Attacks on schools left 25 dead and dozens injured. – Telemundo Miami (51)

At least 25 people were killed and dozens wounded in the fourth attack on or near a school in the city. Gaza strip In just four days, health officials in the sector said Tuesday night.

Dozens gathered in front of Al-Awda School in the city of Abasan in the governorate. Khan YounesIn southern Gaza, when the attack occurred, witnesses told the NBC News team after the attack. They said some of them were watching a soccer game.

Published images Al Jazeera showed and NBC News documented a game in the schoolyard before an explosion was heard. As screams were heard, people ran in all directions.

Soon after, an NBC News crew filmed bloodied patients, including young children, filling the hallways. Many lay on the floor, crying in pain.

“I was walking when suddenly I found myself flying,” said Ahmed Wissam Qadiyeh, 14, lying on a stretcher, his bloodied leg wrapped in bandages. “I saw all the wounded. Just body parts.”

Later, at the scene of the attack, an NBC News crew filmed a child crying over two body bags.

“They killed my father and my uncle,” he cried. “They are dead. They are dead. They are dead.”

The Israeli military said Tuesday it targeted a Hamas fighter involved in the Oct. 7 attack with precision munitions. It said it was investigating reports of civilians being injured near the al-Awda school, which it said was “close to the site of the attack.”

Hamas condemned the attack in a statement. As efforts intensified in Doha, the capital of Qatar, to negotiate a high agreement toFire between Israel and HamasThe movement later warned that the Israeli strikes could threaten progress in the talks.

If a deal is reached, it would end nearly nine months of fighting in Gaza, where local health officials say more than 38,000 people have been killed. It would also mean that hostages held during the terror attack in October 7 Hamas They were to be released. This attack resulted in the deaths of 1,200 people and the kidnapping of about 250 others.

death and misery

The attack was one of at least “four schools affected in the past four days,” Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said in a post on X on Wednesday.

“Schools have been transformed from safe places of education and hope for children into overcrowded havens, and often places of death and misery,” he said.

On Saturday, an attack hit a UNRWA-run school in Nuseirat, central Gaza, killing at least 16 people and wounding dozens, according to local health officials. UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma told NBC News the school was a temporary home for about 2,000 internally displaced Palestinians.

In a statement posted on Telegram that day, the Israeli military said it had attacked “numerous terrorists” operating in buildings in the area of ​​the school. It said the site served as a “hideout and operational infrastructure” from which attacks against Israeli forces were being targeted and carried out.

“Prior to the attack, several measures were taken to mitigate the risk of harm to civilians, including the use of close aerial surveillance and additional intelligence,” the statement said.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment on the possibility that civilians were killed in the attack.

The next day, the Holy Family School in Gaza City, where Israeli forces have expanded their operations in recent days, was hit in a separate attack, the Gaza Civil Defense said in a post on its website. Sunday Telegram.

The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, which owns the school, said in a statement: launch Sunday that the facility had been “a place of refuge for hundreds of civilians” since the start of the war.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the incident.

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari admitted in an interview with Israel’s Channel 13 News that eradicating Hamas from the Gaza Strip is an impossible mission, and that the Islamists will remain there if an alternative government is not found. Randy Serrano with the report.

On Monday, another school in Nuseirat, which Touma said was run by UNRWA, was attacked.

The Israeli military said it attacked “several terrorists carrying out terror activities” and using a school as “cover.”

Israel has insisted throughout the war that Hamas is using schools and other public facilities, including hospitals, for military purposes, a charge Hamas has repeatedly denied.

More than half, or 190, of UNRWA’s installations have been attacked since the war began, “some multiple times, others directly,” Lazzarini said in a statement. Separate post on X On Sunday, he added that at least 520 people were killed as a result of those attacks, and about 1,600 others were injured. He added: “There were a very large number of women and children.”

The latest attacks come amid warning A group of independent human rights experts commissioned by the United Nations has examined the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which has recently been marked by widespread famine throughout the Strip.

At least three children, aged between 13 years and just nine years and six months, have died from malnutrition in the central Gaza Strip, Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah since the end of May, the group of 11 human rights experts said in a statement on Tuesday.

“With these children dying of starvation despite medical treatment in central Gaza, there is no doubt that famine has spread from northern Gaza to central and southern Gaza,” the group said.

According to the organization, at least 34 people have died from malnutrition since the war began, most of them children.