Khadija Girls’ School, which has a field hospital within the complex, was sheltering over 4,000 displaced Palestinians
GAZA – Israeli air strikes on a girls’ school in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, killed at least 30 people and wounded over 100 others on Saturday, the Palestinian health ministry said.
Khadija Girls’ School was sheltering over 4,000 displaced Palestinians, according to civil defence officials in the enclave. A field hospital was also operating inside the school complex.
“I am so lucky to have survived,” Fadel Keshko, a 22-year-old man who was staying in the school with his sick grandmother and nephew, told Middle East Eye.
“The building I took shelter in was directly targeted. The distance between me and the rocket was just a metre away. I am horrified and terrified.”
Keshko and his relatives have since fled to Khan Younis, where the Israeli army is currently attacking areas previously designated as humanitarian zones.
“There’s nothing I can do,” he said. “I am displaced from the north of Gaza. Now, it’s another round of displacement. I don’t know where I should go.”
Israeli fighter jets fired three missiles at the field hospital in the school, the government media office in Gaza said in a statement.
The Israeli army said it hit a Hamas “command and control centre” embedded in the school, without providing any evidence.
The military has regularly used this claim to justify strikes on hospitals, schools, and other civilian infrastructures in Gaza. It has scarcely provided evidence.
Footage from the scene on Saturday showed the school floor filled with debris as rescuers attempted to take away bodies and carry wounded Palestinians.
Keshko described “blood splashed over the floors, mothers crying in pain and panic”.
“No one could even imagine that this would happen,” he added. “It’s a school that shelter originally war wounded survivors and their companions. I can’t even take a breath. I can’t talk. I no longer feel I will stay alive.”
‘I thought I was dreaming’
Eyewitness Mostafa al-Rafati told MEE he saw “children, women, heads, arms, legs, a scene of ghosts”.
He described seeing the person next to him suddenly fly away the moment the strikes hit, in what he called “a horrible scene”.
“I thought I was dreaming, I kept hitting myself because I could not believe what was happening.”
Umm Ahmad Fayed, a displaced woman who took shelter in the school with her family, said she could not find her daughter after the strike.
“I do not know where my daughter is,” she told MEE. “Her clothes, bed, and all her stuff are destroyed, but I do not know if they saved her, if she is dead, if she is alive, I do not know.”
“I am looking for her [everywhere].”
Umm Ahmad’s daughter was staying in a room with other displaced girls, which was damaged by the strikes.
When the attack happened, Umm Ahmad was taking care of her husband, who was brought to the school from al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital shortly before the school attack.
“He was taken from al-Aqsa hospital to here because it was supposedly safe, but there is nowhere safe in Gaza.”
More than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip since 7 October, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
C. MEE
