Schools that have become shelters for displaced people have not been spared from Israeli massacres (Al Jazeera)

On Saturday, the Israeli occupation forces stormed a school in the town of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip that was sheltering thousands of displaced people, after surrounding it and targeting it with gas canisters and fire, which resulted in the death and injury of dozens of Palestinians, according to eyewitnesses.

Anadolu Agency quoted witnesses and media sources that the army forces arrested the men who took refuge in the "Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan" school in the northern Gaza Strip, to escape Israeli shelling in their areas of residence, after evacuating women and children.

A displaced survivor of the Israeli attack on the school (she did not give her name) said in an audio recording published by media professionals on social media platforms: "This afternoon (Saturday), the army stormed the school and asked the women to go to al-Qassam Square near it, while they surrounded and arrested young men and men."

"The army arrested young men and boys over the age of 15," she said, noting that "only 10% of those arrested were released."

"Women and children in the yard near the school are living in tragic conditions without food, water or cover amid the cold weather and the noise of the relentless shelling," she said.

In turn, the Palestinian Ibrahim Abu Riyash said in a post on Facebook Saturday: "The Zionists storm the Khalifa bin Zayed School in the Beit Lahia project, where my father, mother, my wounded brother, dentist Hussam and my younger sister, Dr. Israa, are located, along with more than 7,<> people, including wounded, women and children."

"This is happening after several days in which they were exhausted by the siege, with no food, no water, no one hears and no one cares about them. They treated their wounded in rudimentary ways without any equipment, preventing the wounded from moving outside the school and burying their martyrs in the schoolyard."

"Now, after burning and destroying everything around the school and drones flying over their heads, the school was stormed, the men were arrested and the women were taken to a yard in the Beit Lahia project," he said.

A Palestinian photographer published a video documenting the moment of an elderly man's farewell to his martyr son, after the Israeli occupation targeted the entrance to Khalifa bin Zayed School in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip.

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A post shared by AHMED ALKYLANI || Ahmad al-Kilani (@ahmed.alkilani97)

Dozens of martyrs

Ashraf al-Qudra, spokesman for the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, said at a press conference on Saturday that the army committed "a heinous massacre at Khalifa School in northern Gaza, in which dozens of martyrs and wounded were killed and bled to death."

The situation of displaced people in the school "was catastrophic with no water, food or treatment", he said.

Eyewitnesses told Anadolu Agency that the army had previously targeted everyone who was moving in the school with sniper fire, while the school surroundings were heavily shelled.

Palestinian activists also circulated a video documented in the name of the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, which showed a group of naked men walking out of a school with their hands up.

Activists said the school was the Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan School.

Since the seventh of last October, the Israeli occupation army has been waging a devastating war on the Gaza Strip, leaving 17,700 martyrs, 48,780 wounded, most of them children and women, with thousands more missing and believed to have been martyred under the rubble, massive destruction of infrastructure, and an unprecedented humanitarian disaster.

The Israeli aggression has forced the vast majority of Gaza's 2.3 million people from their homes, many of whom have been displaced multiple times. As fighting rages across the Strip, residents and UN agencies say there is now nowhere safe to go.

Source : Al Jazeera + Anatolia