At least 20 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip last day, the Palestinian Authority's Civil Defense Department said on Saturday.
In Gaza City alone, nine Palestinians were killed in multiple attacks, a spokesman for the Hamas-controlled organization told dpa.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) did not immediately comment. It has always insisted that it is taking measures to protect civilians in the fight against the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.
The IDF said earlier on Saturday that it carried out an airstrike that destroyed a Hamas official at a former school in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip.
There are no reports from the Israeli side of killed or wounded Hamas soldiers or other casualties.
But the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported, citing Palestinian sources, that at least eight people were killed in the attack on the building, including women and children.
WAFA said the refugee families found shelter in the old school.
The Israeli military described the attack as a precision strike and said that measures had been taken in advance to reduce the risk of civilian casualties.
In another incident that took place in Jabalia, three armed criminals were killed after being spotted by a helicopter coming out of a hole, according to the Israeli military.
Rescuers are hampered by fuel, lack of tools
Fire and rescue services in crisis-hit Gaza are still understaffed, local civil defense authorities said on Saturday.
Some of the emergency vehicles in the cities of Gaza and Khan Younis are no longer operational because they do not have the tools to repair them, according to a statement by the Hamas-controlled authorities.
Spare houses and workshops were destroyed during the war by Israeli airstrikes, the report said.
In addition, severe fuel shortages have rendered more than half of the rescue vehicles out of service in the Gaza Strip, he said.
Civil Defense has called on regional and international organizations to quickly deliver spare parts and equipment to Gaza so that emergency transport can be maintained.
The war in Gaza began with an attack led by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023, in which Palestinian forces killed around 1,200 people and kidnapped 250 others in the Gaza Strip.
Israel responded by striking Gaza with airstrikes and sending ground troops into a blockade along the coast with the aim of defeating the extremist group Hamas, which had ruled Gaza until then.
On Saturday, the Hamas-controlled health authority announced that more than 46,537 people have died in the Gaza Strip so far. It said it has increased the number of those killed by 499 people after finalizing the information and confirming their identities in pending cases.
The statistics cannot be independently verified and do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
At the end of last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that so far the army had “killed about 20,000 terrorists” in the Gaza Strip – an impossible claim again.
Palestinian journalists gather around the body of Al-Ghad TV cameraman Saed Abu Nabhan at Al-Awda Hospital, who was martyred by Israeli army bullets in Al-Nuseirat camp. Omar Ashtawy/APA Images via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
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