By Nidal al-Mughrabi
CAIRO (Reuters) -Eight Palestinians were killed on Sunday in an Israeli airstrike on a training school near Gaza City used to distribute aid, Palestinian witnesses said, as Israeli tanks pushed further into the southern city of Rafah.
The strike hit part of a vocational training college run by the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, which now provides aid to displaced families, the witnesses said.
“Some people came to receive vouchers, others were driven from their homes and took shelter here. Some were filling water, others were receiving receipts, and suddenly we heard something fall. We ran away, those who were carrying water spilled it,” said Mohammed Tafesh, one of the witnesses.
A Reuters photographer saw a low-rise building being completely demolished and bodies wrapped in blankets lying along the road waiting to be removed.
“We took out martyrs [from beneath the rubble], one who sold cold drinks and another who sold pastries and others who gave out or received coupons,” Tafesh said. ‘There are about four or five martyrs and ten wounded. Thank God the condition of the injured is good.”
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
UNRWA communications director Juliette Touma said the agency was investigating details of the reported attack before providing more information.
“Since the start of the war, we have recorded that almost 190 of our buildings have been affected. This is the vast majority of our buildings in Gaza,” she said.
A total of 193 UNRWA team members have been killed in the conflict, she said.
More than eight months after Israel’s war in the Hamas-ruled Palestinian enclave, Israel’s advance is focused on the two areas its forces have yet to capture: Rafah at Gaza’s southern tip and the area around Deir al-Balah in Gaza. Centre.
Israel’s ground and air campaign in Gaza was triggered when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli figures.
The offensive has left Gaza in ruins, killing nearly 37,600 people, according to Palestinian health authorities, and leaving almost the entire population homeless and destitute.
ISRAELI TANKS APPROACH RAFAH’S MAWASI CAMP
Residents said Israeli tanks had advanced to the edge of the Mawasi displacement camp in northwest Rafah in heavy fighting with Hamas-led fighters, part of an assault on western and northern Rafah that has seen them blow up dozens of houses in recent times. to dawn.
Images of two Israeli tanks stationed on a hilltop overlooking the coastal area went viral on social media, but Reuters could not independently verify them.
“The fighting with the resistance has been fierce. The occupying forces are now overlooking the Mawasi area, forcing families there to go to Khan Younis,” a resident, who asked not to be named, said in a chat app.
The Israeli military said it was continuing “intelligence-based, targeted operations” in the Rafah area, had located weapons caches and tunnel shafts and killed Palestinian gunmen.
The armed wings of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad movement said their fighters had attacked Israeli forces in Rafah with anti-tank missiles, mortar bombs and pre-placed explosives.
Another attack killed two people in Nuseirat, central Gaza.
On Saturday, Palestinian health officials said at least 40 Palestinians had been killed in separate Israeli attacks in some northern districts of Gaza, where the Israeli army said it had attacked Hamas’ military infrastructure. Hamas said the targets were the civilian population.
In Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, health officials at Kamal Adwan Hospital said two babies had died of malnutrition, bringing to at least 31 the number of children who have died from malnutrition or dehydration since October 7, a number that health officials say is reflected among – intake.
(Reporting and writing by Nidal al-Mughrabi; additional reporting by Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem and Mahmoud Issa in Gaza; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
