One day after the Israeli army withdrew Bombing of the UN school building Central Gaza has become a haven for displaced Palestinians, but some facts remain unclear or disputed.
Israel said it attacked three classrooms with 20 to 30 Palestinian militants, including those involved in the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel, but has not been informed of civilian casualties. Gaza health authorities said many of the dozens killed were children and women. Here's what we know and what we don't know.
What was blown up?
The multi-storey building is one of several at the UNRWA Nusserat Boys Preparatory School, one of many schools run by the main UN agency in Gaza for Palestinian refugees and their descendants.
Like all Schools in the areaBut the school stopped operating in October after Hamas-led attacks on Israel and Israel began retaliatory bombing. Like many schools, it was filled with people displaced by the war from other parts of Gaza who sought shelter in schools, hospitals and other institutions in the hope that they would not be bombed.
Philippe Lazzarini, director of the United Nations Relief Agency for Palestine Refugees, said 6,000 people were living in the school. About three-quarters of Gaza's estimated 2.2 million people have fled their homes, many multiple times.
The Israeli military has called the school in Nusserat a militant base, saying fighters from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad used three of its classrooms to plan and carry out operations against Israel.
How many people died in the Battle of Nuseraat? Who were they?
The Israeli military on Friday released a list of eight Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters it said were killed in the attack, bringing the total to 17 with the list released Thursday.
Military spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said Thursday he was “not aware of any civilian casualties from this attack.” The military did not respond when asked if that was still the case Friday.
But witnesses, medics and Gaza officials said dozens of civilians had been killed – many of them children and women.
A Gaza Health Ministry official said Thursday that at least 41 people had died, while another official said 46 had died. Yasser Khattab, head of the morgue at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in nearby Deir al-Balah, where many bodies were brought, said 46 people had died, including 18 children and nine women. But his account could not be independently confirmed.
Mr. Khattab said the hospital had a sophisticated system for recording and identifying bodies and body parts. “We look for any markings that can help us identify the deceased,” he said.
A New York Times reporter who went to the hospital after the explosion saw bodies of the dead, relatives of the living and the dead, and medical staff trying to squeeze through the crowds. Witnesses described pulling the bodies of children from the rubble of the school.
Karin Hust, a medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders who has been working at the hospital, said most of the patients she has seen over the past few days have been women and children.
How cautiously is Israel acting?
The Nusserat bombing is a classic example of the terrible calculations at work in the eight-month-old war. Hamas, which operates in densely populated neighborhoods, has been accused of using Palestinians and civilian infrastructure as shields. Israel has routinely killed civilians in its fight against Hamas and has even been accused by its allies of using excessive force.
The Israeli military insisted that the airstrike was carefully planned and carried out, targeting only three rooms in the school used by the militants. 45 people died by the end of MayAccording to Gaza officials, Israel used a U.S.-made GBU-39 bomb with about 37 pounds of explosives, which the military said was the smallest bomb its warplanes can carry.
The military said 20 to 30 militants used the school as a base, some of whom took part in the attack on October 7. The military said it had monitored the group for three days before deciding to launch the attack at a time that would cause the fewest civilian casualties.
International Law of War Prohibition of the use of similar websites Hospitals, schools and churches These laws also prohibit the military from attacking such locations, with limited exceptions if the enemy is using them.
Israel says its operations fall within that exception because Hamas regularly operates in those buildings and in the tunnels beneath them, inevitably resulting in civilian casualties.
“We see that Hamas is still there, and they still have military capabilities above ground and underground,” Col. Lerner said Thursday.
In recent months, Israeli troops have repeatedly returned to areas they previously controlled, such as Nusserat, and then pulled out as Hamas fighters re-emerged there, which Israeli officials said justified the need for strikes like Thursday’s.
Legal experts say how far an attacking force can go in such an operation depends on how well it protects civilians and distinguishes them from combatants, and how proportional the attack is to the military advantage gained. In other words, the picture can be very murky in specific circumstances.
Richard Perez Pena and Ephrat Livni Contributed reporting.
