Palestine’s official WAFA news agency said over 100 citizens were killed and dozens injured on Saturday morning after the Israeli occupation forces bombed the al-Tabi’in school in the al-Daraj neighborhood east of Gaza City.
Citing local sources, the agency said the occupation warplanes bombed the school while citizens were performing the dawn prayer.
“The Israeli strikes targeted the displaced people while performing Fajr (dawn) prayers, the matter led to a rapid increase in the number of casualties,” the government media office in Gaza said in a statement.
The media office stressed that the Israeli attack comes within the “framework of the crime of genocide and ethnic cleansing against our Palestinian people in a clear manner.”
The statement added that “due to the horror of the massacre and the large number of martyrs, the medical crews, civil defense, relief and emergency teams have not been able to retrieve the bodies of all the martyrs so far.”
The media office censured the Israeli massacre in the strongest terms, calling on the world to condemn it and hold the occupying regime and the US administration fully responsible for the deadly bombing.
It also renewed its call for the international community and UN organizations to pressure Tel Aviv to stop the crime of genocide and ethnic cleansing against Palestinian civilians and displaced persons in the Gaza Strip, and “stop the flow of blood.”
The Israeli occupation army confirmed the attack in a statement and claimed that the school “served as a hideout for Hamas commanders.”
Backed by the US and its Western allies, the Israeli regime launched an all-out invasion of Gaza after it was caught off-guard by Operation al-Aqsa Storm inside the occupied territories in October last year.
Nearly 40,000 Palestinians have since been killed, most of them women and children, and upwards of 91,000 others injured in the merciless Israeli aggression.
Israel has also been enforcing a crippling siege on the coastal territory by choking off the flow of foodstuffs, medicine, electricity, and water into the Palestinian territory.