Deir ez-Zor Barah, Gaza Strip — Israeli forces carried out airstrikes across the Gaza Strip overnight and Wednesday, hitting a UN school and two homes hosting displaced Palestinian families, killing at least 34 people, including 19 women and children, a hospital official said. Six UN officials were among the dead.
The war in Gaza is now in its 11th month, leaving tens of thousands dead, and international efforts to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas militants have repeatedly stalled, with each side accusing the other of making further unacceptable demands.
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces have raided several towns, backed by airstrikes, continuing their crackdown across the area. The army claims it is targeting militants, but neighborhoods have been destroyed and civilians killed. One airstrike killed five people, the army said, and it said the militants were threatening the army. A second vehicle attack killed at least three people, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
The Israeli military said attackers crashed a fuel truck into a bus stop in the West Bank near the Israeli settlement of Givat Assaf, killing one Israeli soldier. Officials said soldiers and armed civilians “neutralized” the attackers.
At least 14 people, including two children and one woman, were killed in the attack on the UN’s Al-Jauni Boys Preparatory School in Nuseira refugee camp, according to officials at Awda Hospital and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. At least 18 others were wounded.
The Israeli military said it was targeting Hamas fighters planning an attack from inside the school, a claim that could not be independently verified.
One of the children who died was the daughter of Momin Selmi, a member of Gaza’s civil defense agency, which helped rescue the wounded and collect bodies after the attack, the agency said.
Gaza’s schools are home to tens of thousands of Palestinians who have been forced from their homes by Israeli attacks and evacuation orders. Al-Jawni School is one of many in Gaza run by the United Nations Palestinian Agency (UNWRA) that has come under attack multiple times during the war.
UNRWA said six staff members helping displaced people were killed, including a shelter manager. “Humanitarian staff, facilities and operations have been subject to blatant and relentless neglect since the start of the war,” the agency’s director, Philippe Lazzarini, wrote in a statement to X.
Israel frequently bombs schools, alleging they are used by Hamas fighters, who it says are based and operate in densely populated residential areas, and it blames Hamas for civilian casualties in its attacks.
A July study by the Education Cluster, a consortium of aid groups led by UNICEF and Save the Children, found that more than 90 percent of schools in the Gaza Strip had been severely damaged or partially damaged in attacks, and more than half of the schools serving displaced people had been attacked.
At least 41,084 Palestinians have been killed and 95,029 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza, the region’s health ministry said. The ministry’s figures did not distinguish between civilians and militants. Israel launched the operation vowing to destroy Hamas after an October 7 attack on southern Israel in which militants killed about 1,200 people and abducted 250.
According to the European Hospital, which took in the injured, an airstrike on a house near the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis early that morning killed 11 people, including six siblings aged between 21 months and 21 years old.
Nine people, including six women and children, were killed in an airstrike late Tuesday on a house in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza city, the Health Ministry and the Civil Defense said. The house belonged to Akram al-Najjar, a professor at Al-Quds Open University, who survived, the Civil Defense said.
The Israeli army said two soldiers were killed and seven injured when a helicopter crashed in southern Gaza while evacuating wounded soldiers. The army said the nighttime crash was not the result of enemy fire and was under investigation. The army said 340 Israeli soldiers have been killed since ground operations began in Gaza in late October, at least 50 of them in accidents.
Violence has also spiked in the West Bank. Israel has stepped up military attacks there as it says it is working to dismantle militant groups and prevent a rise in militant attacks against Israelis. Palestinians say the operations are aimed at cementing Israel’s indefinite military rule over the area. At the same time, attacks by Jewish settlers against Palestinians have accelerated.
The army said it launched attacks on Wednesday around Tulkarem and two towns in the north of the West Bank, destroying an explosives laboratory, a weapons manufacturing factory and vehicles laced with explosives. The army said five militants were killed in airstrikes supporting forces operating in the town of Tubas. The Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed the five killed but did not say whether they were militants or civilians.
The Red Crescent said three people were killed in a car attack in a village outside Tulkarem, and the army confirmed it carried out the attack in the village but gave no further details.
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