GAZA: Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least 61 Palestinians in the space of 24 hours, local medics said on Saturday, as Israeli forces battled Hamas-led fighters in the territory, Reuters reports.
An Israeli air strike on the Halima al-Sa’diyya school compound serving as a shelter for displaced people in the Jabalia urban refugee camp killed at least eight people and wounded 15 others, medics said.
The Israeli military claimed the strike had targeted a Hamas command centre inside the compound. It accused Hamas of repeatedly exploiting civilians and civilian infrastructure for military purposes, an allegation Hamas denies.
Five more people were killed in a strike on a house in Gaza City.
The armed wings of the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah groups said they had fought Israeli troops in Gaza City, in central areas and in the south with anti-tank rockets and mortars, and in some incidents detonated bombs to target tanks and other army vehicles.
Gaza civil defence says 3 killed in Israeli strike on school
Gaza’s civil defence agency said an Israeli air strike targeting a school-turned-shelter for displaced Palestinians has killed at least three people, while the military reported it struck a Hamas command centre, AFP reports.
“Three martyrs and more than 20 wounded people were retrieved after an Israeli warplane fired two missiles at a prayer room and a classroom at the Amr Ibn al-Aas School, where refugees were sheltering in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood in northern Gaza City,” Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the civil defence agency, told AFP.
The Israeli military said it conducted a “precise strike” at the school. The strike targeted “terrorists who were operating inside a Hamas command and control centre… embedded inside a compound that previously served as Amr Ibn al-Aas school,” the military said in a statement.
Autopsy of Turkish-American activist shows she was killed by sniper’s bullet to the head: Nablus governor
An autopsy report of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a Turkish-American activist, has confirmed she was killed by an Israeli sniper’s bullet to the head, Anadolu reports quoting Nablus governor Ghassan Daghlas.
In a statement to Anadolu, Daghlas said the autopsy results indicated Eygi’s cause of death was a gunshot wound inflicted by a sniper, specifically targeting her head. Eygi had been rushed to a nearby hospital where she was declared dead upon arrival.
He said the examination was conducted late on Friday night at the Forensic Medicine Institute, An-Najah National University in Nablus.
According to Turkish Foreign Ministry sources, information about Eygi’s death was shared with the Turkish consulate in Jerusalem. The sources indicated that Eygi may have been intentionally targeted by an Israeli sniper using live ammunition rather than rubber bullets.
The Israeli military has yet to comment on the specifics of the incident or the findings of the autopsy.
