The joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet struck Hamas and Islamic Jihad command room at the Taba’een school in Gaza City.
By Vered Weiss, World Israel News
Amid global condemnation of Israel’s attack on a Gaza City school on Saturday, Israel’s military says it killed 19 terrorists and said Hamas has inflated the number of casualties.
Hamas’s civil defense agency claimed that 90 people were killed at the school, many of them allegedly refugees seeking shelter and called the offensive “a massacre”
Israel has maintained that it has targeted schools during the Gaza operation because terrorist leaders hide their infrastructure and embed terrorists within schools, mosques and hospitals.
The joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet internal security agency struck a Hamas and Islamic Jihad command center at the Taba’een school in Gaza City.
The IDF said it used “precision munitions” and said that footage from the strike showed that it caused no damage to the surrounding school complex.
The IDF added, the operations “could not have caused the damage that corresponds to the casualty reports of the government media office in Gaza.”
It was unclear how many were killed and whether they were civilians or terrorists.
Despite the IDF’s statements the strike was greeted with criticism even from Israel’s allies.
The White House said it was “deeply concerned” about the airstrike and the reported number of the civilian casualties.
“We know Hamas has been using schools as locations to gather and operate out of, but we have also said repeatedly and consistently that Israel must take measures to minimize civilian harm,” said a statement issued by National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell wrote on X, “Horrified by images from a sheltering school in Gaza hit by an Israeli strike, with reportedly dozens of Palestinian victims. At least 10 schools were targeted in the last weeks. There’s no justification for these massacres.”
UK Foreign Minister David Lammy wrote that he was “appalled” by the strike and called for “an immediate ceasefire.”
Officials from Egypt and Qatar, nations involved in the current hostage-ceasefire negotiations, condemned the attack and demanded an investigation.
Egypt claimed the “deliberate killing” of civilians cast doubt on whether Israel was serious about a hostage and ceasefire deal.
The Qatari Foreign Ministry called for “an urgent international investigation, including the dispatch of independent UN investigators, to ascertain the facts regarding the Israeli occupation forces’ continued targeting of schools and shelters for displaced persons.”