Death toll expected to rise after about 100 Palestinians killed in Israeli air strike on Gaza school

Disastrous scenes have unfolded in Gaza where the Israel Defense Forces reportedly targeted a school, killing dozens of people.

An independent, UN-appointed rights expert accused Israel of committing “genocide” in its Gaza war after an Israeli strike targeting a school on Saturday killed 93 people, according to local rescuers.

“Israel is genociding the Palestinians one neighbourhood at the time, one hospital at the time, one school at the time, one refugee camp at the time, one safe zone at the time,” Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, said on social media platform X.

Israel was carrying out such strikes against Palestinians using “US and European weapons”, Albanese said.

A child sits beside the shrouded corpses of people killed in an overnight Israeli strike, in the yard of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on August 10, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (Photo by Eyad BABA / AFP)

“May the Palestinians forgive us for our collective inability to protect them,” she added.

A mediator in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza on Saturday demanded an urgent probe after the latest Israeli strike on a school housing displaced Palestinians.

The foreign ministry said it renews The Gulf emirate’s “demand for an urgent international investigation, including the dispatch of independent UN investigators, to ascertain the facts regarding the Israeli occupation forces’ continued targeting of schools and shelters for displaced persons”.

In a report issued in March, Albanese said there were “reasonable grounds” to determine that Israel had committed several acts of “genocide” in its war in Gaza.

Israel, which has long been highly critical of Albanese and her mandate, denounced her report as an “obscene inversion of reality”.

TOPSHOT – An injured child cries in the yard of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, following an overnight Israeli strike on August 10, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (Photo by Eyad BABA / AFP)

She has said that “of course” she also condemned Hamas for its attack on Israel which triggered 10 months of war in the Gaza Strip.

Special rapporteurs are appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council but do not speak on behalf of the UN.

ABC News reported director-general of the Gaza government media office, Ismail Al-Thawabta, said deaths were expected to increase because the al-Ahli Hospital, where the injured were taken, has struggled to cope with the huge intake.

He said “most of which are in severe and critical condition,” according to Al Jazeera News.

The Israeli army reportedly used three 2,000-pound bombs in its air strike.

TOPSHOT – Black smoke billows following an Israeli air strike that targeted a house in the southern Lebanese village of Khiam near the Lebanese-Israeli border on June 21, 2024, amid ongoing cross-border clashes between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on June 21, that fighting between Israel and Hezbollah must not turn Lebanon into "another Gaza." (Photo by Rabih DAHER / AFP)

The Israel Defense Forces confirmed on X that it attacked the school, but claimed it did so because it was holding Hamas militants.

The IDF said it struck a Hamas “command and control centre” that was “embedded” in the school “which is used as a shelter for the residents of Gaza City”.

“The headquarters was used by the terrorists of the terrorist organisation Hamas to hide and from there they planned and promoted terrorist operations against the IDF forces and the citizens of the State of Israel,” the IDF said.