An Israeli airstrike on a school building killed dozens of people sheltering inside on Monday, as questions remained about distributing aid to Palestinians in Gaza.
While the aid system is worked out, Israel has continued to carry out strikes across the densely populated Gaza Strip, killing at least 45 people on Monday, according to local health authorities.
In Gaza City, medics said, 30 Palestinians, including women and children who had been displaced by the 20-month war and were seeking shelter in a Gaza City school, were killed in an airstrike. Images shared widely on social media showed what appeared to be badly burned bodies being pulled from the rubble.
Alaa Kabej said his 8-year-old nephew was among the dead in the attack that struck as people slept.
Farah Nussair said the school was sheltering “civilians, children, elderly, women, and men — just the tired ones who needed food and water.” She added, “Our hearts have died,” describing scenes of charred people and body parts.
“We fled to the south, they bombed us in the south. We returned to the north, they bombed us in the north,” said Nussair, a child in her lap.
“There is no security or safety, neither at schools, nor hospitals — not anywhere,” she added.
Israel claims attack on Hamas control centre
Israel’s military confirmed that it had targeted the school. It said that the building was being used as a centre by Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants to plan and organize attacks.
It said numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.
The military did not provide evidence that the school was being used by militants. On Monday, Israel Defence Forces Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir said Hamas had lost many assets including its command and control infrastructure.
Another strike on a house in Jabalia, adjacent to Gaza City, killed at least 15 other people, medics said, taking Monday’s death toll to 45.
Aid foundation director resigns
Israel says a new system is needed to separate aid from Hamas, which it accuses of stealing and using food to impose control over the population. The charge is rejected by Hamas, which says it protects aid convoys from gangs of armed looters.
But the executive director of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation for the past two months quit unexpectedly on Sunday, a day before the group was due to begin operations.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel’s military operation will continue until all parts of Gaza are under Israeli control. Thomas Juneau, a professor at the University of Ottawa, and Jon Allen, a former Canadian ambassador to Israel, join Power & Politics to weigh in on the implications of Netanyahu’s recent comments for the international community.
Jake Wood said he resigned because the group could not adhere “to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence.”
His departure underscores the confusion surrounding the foundation, which has been boycotted by the United Nations and the aid groups supplying aid to Gaza before Israel imposed a total blockade on the enclave in March.
Israel, which floated a similar plan earlier this year, says it will not be involved in distributing aid but it had endorsed the plan and would provide security for it.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which would use private contractors working under a broad Israeli security umbrella, said it would begin deliveries on Monday, with the aim of reaching one million Palestinians by the end of the week.
“We plan to scale [up] rapidly to serve the full population in the weeks ahead,” it said in a statement.
The Switzerland-registered foundation has been heavily criticized by the United Nations, whose officials have said the private company’s aid distribution plans are insufficient for reaching the more than two million residents of Gaza. The new operation will rely on four major distribution centres in southern Gaza that will screen families for involvement with Hamas militants, potentially using facial recognition technology, according to aid officials.
But many details of how the operation will work remain unexplained, and it was not immediately clear whether aid groups that have refused to co-operate with the foundation would still be able to send in trucks.
Hamas condemned the new system, saying it would “replace order with chaos, enforce a policy of engineered starvation of Palestinian civilians, and use food as a weapon during wartime.”
Israel’s war in Gaza has squeezed the population into an ever-narrowing zone in coastal areas and around the southern city of Khan Younis.
The Israeli campaign, triggered after Hamas-led Islamist militants stormed Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, has devastated Gaza and pushed nearly all of its residents from their homes.
The offensive has killed more than 53,000 people in Gaza, many of them civilians, according to its health authorities.
