Al Jazeera :
The Israeli military has killed at least 40 people and injured 71 others in the Gaza Strip during the past 24 hours, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani says Tehran is not looking to escalate regional tensions but it believes “punishing Israel is necessary” to prevent further instability.
At least 39,623 people were killed and 91,469 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attacks on October 7 and more than 200 were taken captive.
A ministry statement added that some 91,469 other people have been injured in the assault.
“Israeli forces killed 40 people and injured 71 others in two ‘massacres’ against families in the last 24 hours,” the ministry said.
“Many people are still trapped under rubble and on the roads as rescuers are unable to reach them,” it added.
Flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire, Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas.
Almost 10 months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water, and medicine.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, which ordered it to immediately halt its military operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.
According to the Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza, 80 percent of those killed and injured in the strikes on Sunday on the Hassan Salama and al-Nasr schools were children.
Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said that the schools, which have been used as shelters by displaced Palestinians, have been severely damaged.
“This is the same exact scenario that we’ve seen in the past few days. What we know for a fact right now is that there is [a] concentration of attacks on evacuation centres. What’s really concerning about that is … that the Israeli military is not giving any prior warning to people inside these evacuation centres,” Mahmoud said.
The correspondent noted that most of the buildings used as shelters for the displaced in Gaza are schools, as they are the only large spaces available now to house a significant number of people.
“This is happening in an unpredictable way, causing severe casualties and increasing the trauma of a population already displaced in some cases up to five, six or seven times across the northern part of the Gaza Strip,” Mahmoud said.
Sunday’s attacks followed the bombing of a school on Saturday by the Israeli army. Following Sunday’s attacks, at least 15 people were killed in Israeli air raids on the Hamama school in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood in Gaza City, which was sheltering displaced Palestinians.
Following the strikes on Sunday, Nebal Farsakh from the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) told Al Jazeera that the attacks were “again another proof that there is no safe place in Gaza”.
“These two schools are housing displaced civilians who have been forced to leave multiple times, and now even they have been forced to flee another time after this attack,” she said.
“Israel has been systematically targeting civilians,” Farsakh said.
The Israeli military claimed – without providing evidence – that the “schools were used by Hamas’s Al Furqan Battalion as a
hiding place for its terrorist operatives and as command centres used to plan and execute attacks”.
Reporting from Amman, Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut said that these claims from the Israeli army have been seen “time and time again”.
“The military says and continues to claim that Hamas is using these places, but we have never seen any evidence,” she said.
“The [Israeli] military claims they take precautionary measures to make sure minimum damage will be caused to civilians through their strikes ….but you see time and time again Palestinian civilians injured or picking up bodies from rubble, so there is no warning,” Salhut added.
