GAZA: An Israeli air strike hit a school in central Gaza on Wednesday, with the Hamas-run territory’s civil defense agency reporting that 18 people were killed, including UN staffers, and the military saying it had targeted militants.
The Al-Jawni school in Nuseirat, already hit several times during the war, was struck again on Wednesday, killing 18 people, including two members of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said Gaza’s civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal.
UNRWA gave the higher figure of six staffers killed at the Nuseirat school-turned-shelter, calling it the highest death toll among its team in a single incident.
“This school has been hit five times since the war began. It is home to around 12,000 displaced people, mainly women and children,” the UN agency separately posted on X. “No one is safe in Gaza.”
UN chief Antonio Guterres deplored the killings, which he also said included six UNRWA colleagues.
“What’s happening in Gaza is totally unacceptable,” he wrote on social media platform X.
“These dramatic violations of international humanitarian law need to stop now.”
Gaza’s civil defense agency said at least 18 other people were wounded in the school bombing.
AFP could not independently verify the toll, which the agency said included several women and children.
Israel’s military said its air force had “conducted a precise strike on terrorists who were operating inside a Hamas command-and-control center” on the grounds of Al-Jawni, without elaborating on the outcome or the identities of those targeted.
“Most of the people took refuge in schools and the schools were bombed,” said Basil Amarneh from Gaza’s Al-Aqsa hospital, where children were arriving in the arms of medics.
“Where will people go?”
The vast majority of the Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once by the war, triggered by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, with many seeking safety in schools.
Israeli forces have struck several such schools in recent months, saying Palestinian militants were operating there and hiding among displaced civilians — charges denied by Hamas.
In July, at least 16 people were killed in an air strike on the Al-Jawni facility that Israel said had targeted “terrorists.”
Israel’s military offensive since the war began on October 7 has killed at least 41,084 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.
The October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, which also includes hostages killed in captivity.
Israel’s military meanwhile reported the deaths of two soldiers late Tuesday when an army helicopter crashed in the area of Gaza’s southern city of Rafah.
The military announced on Wednesday that the helicopter had crashed while landing and that another eight soldiers were injured.
The aircraft had been on a “life-saving operation” to evacuate a wounded soldier when it crashed, Major General Tomer Bar said in a statement.
“An investigative committee has been appointed to investigate the details of the crash,” he said, and called it an “operational accident.”
The latest deaths bring the Israeli military’s losses in the Gaza campaign to 344 since its ground offensive began on October 27.
UN chief Guterres says 6 colleagues killed in Israel strike on Gaza school
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UN chief Guterres says 6 colleagues killed in Israel strike on Gaza school
- “Among those killed was the manager of the UNRWA shelter and other team members providing assistance to displaced people,” UNRWA said on X
Syria’s Kurdish fighters agree to leave Aleppo after deadly clashes
- Syria’s official SANA news agency reported that “buses carrying the last batch of members of the SDF organization have left the Sheikh Maqsud neighborhood in Aleppo, heading toward northeastern Syria”
ALEPPO: Syria’s Kurdish fighters said Sunday that they agreed under a ceasefire to withdraw from Aleppo after days of fighting government forces in the city.
Hours earlier, Syria’s military said it had finished operations in the Kurdish-held Sheikh Maqsud neighborhood with state television reporting that Kurdish fighters who surrendered were being bused to the north.
The military had already announced its seizure of Aleppo’s other Kurdish-held neighborhood, Ashrafiyeh.
Kurdish forces had controlled pockets of Syria’s second city Aleppo and operate a de facto autonomous administration across swathes of the north and northeast, much of it captured during the 14-year civil war.
The latest clashes erupted after negotiations to integrate the Kurds into the country’s new government stalled.
“We reached an understanding that led to a ceasefire and secured the evacuation of the martyrs, the wounded, the trapped civilians and the fighters from Ashrafiyeh and Sheikh Maqsud neighborhoods to northern and eastern Syria,” the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) wrote in a statement.
Syria’s official SANA news agency reported that “buses carrying the last batch of members of the SDF organization have left the Sheikh Maqsud neighborhood in Aleppo, heading toward northeastern Syria.”
The SDF initially denied its fighters were leaving, describing the bus transfers as forced displacement of civilians.
An AFP correspondent saw at least five buses on Saturday carrying men out of Sheikh Maqsud, but could not independently verify their identities.
According to the SDF statement, the ceasefire was reached “through the mediation of international parties to stop the attacks and violations against our people in Aleppo.”
The United States and European Union both called for the Syrian government and Kurdish authorities to return to political dialogue.
The fighting, some of the most intense since the ousting of long-time ruler Bashar Assad in December 2024, has killed at least 21 civilians, according to figures from both sides, while Aleppo’s governor said 155,000 people fled their homes.
Both sides blamed the other for starting the clashes on Tuesday.
Children ‘still inside’
On the outskirts of Sheikh Maqsud, families who had been trapped by the fighting were leaving, accompanied by Syrian security forces.
An AFP correspondent saw men carrying children on their backs board buses headed to shelters.
Dozens of young men in civilian clothing were separated from the crowd, with security forces making them sit on the ground before transporting them to an unknown destination, according to the correspondent.
A Syrian security official told AFP on condition of anonymity that the young men were “fighters” being “transferred to Syrian detention centers.”
At the entrance to the district, 60-year-old Imad Al-Ahmad was heading in the opposite direction, trying to seek permission to return home.
“I left four days ago...I took refuge at my sister’s house,” he told AFP. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to return today.”
Nahed Mohammad Qassab, a 40-year-old widow also waiting to return, said she left before the fighting to attend a funeral.
“My three children are still inside, at my neighbor’s house. I want to get them out,” she said.
A flight suspension at Aleppo airport was extended until further notice.
‘Return to dialogue’
US envoy Tom Barrack met Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa on Saturday, and afterwards called for a “return to dialogue” with the Kurds in accordance with the integration framework agreed in March.
The deal was meant to be implemented last year, but differences, including Kurdish demands for decentralized rule, stymied progress as Damascus repeatedly rejected the idea.
The fighting in Aleppo raised fears of a regional escalation, with neighboring Turkiye, a close ally of Syria’s new Islamist authorities, saying it was ready to intervene. Israel has sided with the Kurdish forces.
The clashes have also tested the Syrian authorities’ ability to reunify the country after the brutal civil war and commitment to protecting minorities, after sectarian bloodshed rocked the country’s Alawite and Druze communities last year.
