Israeli Bombing Turns Gaza School Shelter Into 'Site for a Massacre'

Israeli forces killed at least 12 Palestinians, including two children, in the bombing of a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City on Tuesday, according to Gaza's civil defense agency.

An Israeli plane dropped a bomb on the Mustafa Hafiz School, which housed hundreds or thousands of displaced people, without warning, leaving Palestinian rescue workers to sift through the rubble of the collapsed building, looking for bodies.

"The moment we heard the explosion, we ran for our lives," an unnamed young girl told Al Jazeera. "My sister kept crying. We did not know what to do. I saw dead bodies torn to pieces."

The dead included Hamzah Mortaja, who was preparing a story about displaced Palestinians, according to Al Jazeera. Hamzah Mortaja was the brother of Yasser Mortaja, a journalist who was killed by Israeli forces in 2018 while covering protests at the structure separating Israel and Gaza.

Israel has repeatedly targeted schools since its onslaught in Gaza began in October. On August 10, a strike killed roughly 100 people at another school refuge in Gaza City, according to local authorities, though Israel said the number was inflated. Israeli forces have killed more than 40,170 Palestinians since October, according to the Gaza health ministry.

The Israeli military said Tuesday that the bombing of Mustafa Hafiz School had been a "precise strike on terrorists who were operating" inside the school—a justification also used in other such attacks. Hamas has consistently denied Israeli claims that it uses schools and hospitals for military purposes. Hamas and allied militant groups killed more than 1,100 Israelis on October 7 and took about 250 hostages, many of whom have died in captivity, including six whose bodies Israeli forces retrieved on Tuesday.

Mustafa Hafiz School, on the western side of Gaza City, served as a "last resort" for many hundreds of Palestinian families, Al Jazeera reported. Standing outside the destroyed school, an unnamed Palestinian woman told Quds News Network, a Palestinian youth news agency, that her family had previously fled Israeli tanks and already found it impossible to sleep at night, even before Tuesday's bombing.

The attack on Mustafa Hafiz School came as part of a continued Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip. On Sunday, an Israeli strike killed a 36-year-old teacher and all six of her children at their apartment in the town of Deir al-Balah. On Monday, Israeli forces struck the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, run by the United Nations, killing at least nine, and killed at least 35 in total across the enclave that day, Al Jazeera reported.

U.S. diplomats have been part of an international effort to arrange a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, but both sides have objected to aspects of proposed deals and this week expressed pessimism that a deal could be reached. Hamas has said that it agreed in principle to a deal proposed by the Biden administration in late May and approved by the U.N. Security Council in June, but that the U.S. is now proposing a deal full of new, inflexible Israeli conditions. A Hamas official said that the U.S. was "merely buying time for Israel to continue its genocide," Al Jazeera reported Tuesday.

The U.S. is Israel's main military supplier and diplomatic ally. Last week, the Biden administration approved another $20 billion in military aid for the country.

The support has included jet fuel, diesel, and other petroleum products that were the subject of a report released Tuesday by Oil Change International, an advocacy group. The report argues that the U.S. government and multinational companies could be complicit in genocide for their role in supplying Israel fuel for its war effort, given the International Court of Justice ruling in January that ordered Israel to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza.

The report says that the U.S. supplies key JP8 jet fuel to Israel. A U.S.-registered tanker that transports the fuel was recently the subject of scrutiny in Europe, where there was a push to prevent it from docking.

Six well-known multinationals—Chevron, BP, ExxonMobil, Shell, Eni, and TotalEnergies—provide Israel with about 35% of its oil, the report says.