The three missiles fired by the Israeli army, at dawn on Saturday, August 10, at the Tabeen school building in the al-Daraj neighborhood, left no chance for those who had taken refuge there during their long wanderings through Gaza. Some of the displaced had gathered in the adjoining mosque to perform the dawn prayer (Fajr), while others were sleeping in the overcrowded school. Given the state of some of the bodies, crushed and fragmented by the blast, it was still difficult on Monday to know the exact number of people killed, estimated at over 80.
In the hours following the strikes, as international outrage mounted, the Israeli army built up its argument to justify the attack. The Israeli army first put out a hesitant statement on Saturday: "We have intelligence indications that the terrorist Ashraf Judah, Islamic Jihad's [a Palestinian organization engaged in armed struggle against Israel] brigade commander of the Central Camps Brigade was at the camp." They added that it is unclear whether he was hit during the strike.
The Israeli army also listed 19 names of members of Hamas or its ally, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, including commanders, who they said had taken up residence in the school and were eliminated in the series of strikes. "Increasingly in recent months Hamas has focused on exploiting school buildings, often where civilians are sheltering inside, to use them as military facilities, command and control centers, for storing weapons, and to execute terrorist attacks," claimed the Israeli forces in a statement.
The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned a policy of "systematic attacks on schools," counting at least 21 establishments hit since July 4. It estimates that the army strikes that have taken place there have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people, many of them women and children. "Another day of horror in Gaza, another school hit with reports of dozens of Palestinians killed among them women, children and older people," said Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, on social media. "It's time for these horrors unfolding under our watch to end. We cannot let the unbearable become a new norm. The more recurrent, the more we lose our collective humanity."
Will this latest deadly strike and atrocious images earn a place in history? Tamer Kirolos, regional director of the NGO Save the Children, took issue with the possibility of people becoming used to horror, denouncing in a statement the "deadliest attack on a school since October 2023." He demanded, "All parties must respect the protected status of schools and not use schools as battlegrounds."
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