A day after Israeli forces bombed a UN school complex in central Gaza that had been a refuge for Palestinian refugees, some facts remain unclear or disputed.
Israel said on October 7 that it had attacked three classrooms used by 20 to 30 Palestinian militants, including some who took part in a Hamas-led attack on Israel, and that it was not aware of any civilian casualties. Gaza health authorities said many of the dozens of dead were children and women. Here’s what we know and what we don’t know.
What was bombed?
The multi-storey building was one of several buildings that made up the UNRWA Nuseirat Boys’ Preparatory School. The school was one of many schools in the Gaza Strip run by the main UN agency for Palestinian refugees and their descendants.
Like all schools in the region, it suspended operations in October after Hamas led attacks on Israel and Israel launched a retaliatory bombing campaign. And like many of them, it has become crowded with people from other parts of the Gaza Strip who have fled their homes due to war and seek refuge in schools, hospitals and other institutions they hope will be less likely to be bombed.
Philippe Lazarini, director of the United Nations relief agency for Palestinian refugees, said 6,000 people were living at the school. About three-quarters of Gaza’s population of about 2.2 million people have fled their homes, many of them multiple times.
The Israeli military has referred to the school in Nusseyrat as a military base, saying fighters from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad used the three classrooms to plan and carry out operations against Israel.
How many people died in Nusseyrat, and who were they?
The Israeli military on Friday released the names of eight Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters killed in the airstrikes, adding them to the list released Thursday, bringing the total to 17.
Military spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said Thursday that he was “unaware of any civilian casualties” from the attack. The county did not respond to a question Friday asking whether that was still happening.
But witnesses, medics and Gaza officials said dozens of civilians were killed, many of them children and women.
A Gaza health ministry official said Thursday that at least 41 people had died, while another official said 46 people had died. Yasser Khattab, an official overseeing the morgue at Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital near Deir al-Bala where many of the bodies were recovered, said there. 46 people died, including 18 children and 9 women. However, his statements could not be independently verified.
Mr Khattab said the hospital had well-utilized systems in place to document and identify corpses and their parts. “We look for any marker that will help us identify that person,” he said.
A New York Times reporter who visited the hospital after the bombing found it crowded with the bodies of the dead, the families of the living, and medical staff trying to navigate the crowds of people. Witnesses described pulling the remains of children from the rubble of the school.
Karin Huster, medical coordinator for the aid group Doctors Without Borders and who works at the hospital, said most of the patients she had seen in the past few days were women and children.
How cautious were Israel’s actions?
The bombing in Nuseirat demonstrates the terrible calculation of a war that lasted eight months. Hamas, which operates in densely populated areas, is accused of cynically using Palestinians and civilian infrastructure as a shield. Israel regularly kills civilians targeting Hamas and is accused even by its allies of using excessive and indiscriminate force.
The Israeli military claims that the airstrikes were planned and carried out with great care and precision, targeting only three rooms of the school used by militants. Israel used American-made GBU-39 bombs containing about 37 pounds of explosives there and in the Rafah camp, where Israeli bombing and subsequent fires killed 45 people in late May, according to Gaza officials. It is the smallest thing a fighter jet can carry.
Military authorities said 20 to 30 militants, including some who took part in the Oct. 7 assault, used the school as a base. It said it maintained surveillance for three days before striking at a moment when civilian casualties could be minimized.
International laws of war prohibit the use of places such as hospitals, schools, and houses of worship for military purposes. The law also prohibits troops from attacking such sites unless they are being used by enemy forces.
Israel says it operates within that exception because Hamas routinely operates inside buildings and in tunnels beneath them, which inevitably results in civilian casualties.
“We know that Hamas still exists and still has capabilities above and below ground,” Col. Lerner said Thursday.
In recent months, Israeli forces have repeatedly returned to areas they previously controlled, such as Nuseirat, and then moved on as Hamas fighters reemerged. Israeli officials said this demonstrated the need to carry out strikes like the one on Thursday.
Legal experts say how far an attacking force can go with such operations varies on a case-by-case basis, depending on how it attempts to protect civilians and distinguish them from combatants, and how proportional the attack is to the military advantage gained. That said, it can be very dark in certain situations.
Richard Perez-Peña and Efrat Livni contributed to the report.
