GAZA STRIP: Gaza officials told AFP on Monday they had identified 75 of 93 Palestinians killed in an Israeli air strike on a school building, while Israel’s military said the weekend raid had “eliminated” 31 militants.
Civil defense rescuers in the Hamas-ruled territory said the Al-Tabieen religious school in Gaza City was struck on Saturday as displaced Palestinians sheltering there gathered for dawn prayers.
The Israeli military has published the names and pictures of 31 people it said were militants who died in the raid.
Previously it had reported 19 militants were killed there.
AFP was unable to independently verify the death toll at the school, which the Israeli military said it targeted because it housed a Hamas command and control base.
“There are 93 dead in the Al-Tabieen school strike, 75 of them have been identified,” Gaza civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP on Monday.
“The others have not yet been identified because some bodies are torn and charred by the bombardment.”
He said the dead included 11 children and six women.
Amjad Aliwa, an emergency doctor at Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City, confirmed that 75 people killed in the strike had been identified.
“There are still bodies (whose identities are unknown) that are completely destroyed,” he told AFP.
“There are also some families who have been displaced to the south (of the Gaza Strip) and cannot come to identify their loved ones.”
The military said it struck the school compound after receiving intelligence that Hamas militants who were using it as a base had plans to attack Israel and its security forces.
“The strike was carried out using three precise munitions,” it said hours after the raid, adding that “no severe damage was caused to the compound where the terrorists were situated.”
The war in Gaza broke out after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data.
Militants also seized 251 people, 111 of whom are still held captive in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive against Hamas in Gaza has so far killed at least 39,897 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, which does not provide details on civilian and militant deaths.
Gaza officials say 75 bodies identified after Israeli school strike
https://arab.news/crczq
Gaza officials say 75 bodies identified after Israeli school strike
- Civil defense rescuers in territory said the religious school in Gaza City was struck Saturday as displaced Palestinians sheltering there gathered for prayers
- The Israeli military has published the names and pictures of 31 people it said were militants who died in the raid
Syria says detained senior Daesh jihadist in Damascus
- The arrest came less than two weeks after a December 13 attack killed two US soldiers
DAMASCUS: Syrian authorities have arrested a senior Daesh group official in the Damascus region in a joint operation with a US-led international coalition, a security official said on Wednesday.
Taha Al-Zoubi, also known as Abu Omar Tabiya, an Daesh leader in Damascus, was detained with several of his men, General Ahmad Al-Dalati was reported as saying by state news agency SANA.
The arrest came less than two weeks after a December 13 attack killed two US soldiers and a US civilian that Washington said was carried out by a lone Daesh gunman in central Syria’s Palmyra.
“Our specialized units, in cooperation with the General Intelligence Directorate and and International Coalition forces, carried out a precise security operation targeting” an Daesh hideout, Dalati said.
On December 20, a Syria monitor said that five Daesh members were killed in US strikes in retaliation for the December 13 attack.
It was the first such incident since the overthrow of longtime ruler Bashar Assad in December last year, and Syrian authorities said the perpetrator was a security forces member who was due to be fired for his “extremist Islamist ideas.”
