![161c69d0 bbaa 11ef acb0 1fafa3fb8111.jpg AFP Palestinians inspect damage following an Israeli airstrike on a school hosting displaced families in Khan Younis, southern Gaza (December 16, 2024)](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/ebb6/live/161c69d0-bbaa-11ef-acb0-1fafa3fb8111.jpg.webp)
More than 50 folks had been killed in Israeli air and floor strikes within the Gaza Strip on Sunday, in accordance with native docs and rescuers.
Among the victims there have been kids, a cameraman who labored for the Al Jazeera tv community and Civil Protection personnel.
The Israeli army stated it focused websites utilized by Hamas and its allied Palestinian Islamic Jihad armed group.
The Hamas-run Health Ministry stated these deaths meant the variety of Palestinians killed in Gaza through the 14-month conflict between Israel and Hamas had exceeded 45,000.
The ministry doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians, however reported in October that 29,980 kids, ladies and aged folks had been among the many recognized victims.
The figures are sometimes disputed by the Israeli authorities, which says almost 20,000 “terrorists” have been killed, however are extensively accepted by UN businesses.
The conflict started when Hamas-led gunmen carried out an unprecedented assault in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, throughout which round 1,200 folks had been killed and 251 others had been taken hostage.
Many of these killed Sunday had been at a United Nations-run faculty used as a shelter for displaced households within the southern metropolis of Khan Younis.
Harrowing footage confirmed a bloody scene on the third flooring of Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz School, with the our bodies of youngsters apparently amongst these eliminated.
“People had been secure, staying of their properties after reciting the dinner prayer. They had been sitting, sleeping and staying of their seats,” Manal Tafesh, whose brother and youngsters had been among the many folks killed. mortuary.
Doctors stated no less than 13 folks had been killed, whereas a spokesman for the United Nations company for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) stated he had heard experiences of round 20 victims, lots of them ladies and youngsters.
“It does not cease. It’s so relentless the ache and struggling we proceed to have,” Louise Wateridge instructed the BBC from central Gaza.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stated it had “carried out a exact strike towards Hamas terrorists working inside a command and management middle” embedded throughout the faculty.
It additionally accused Hamas and different armed teams of exploiting civilians and utilizing civilian infrastructure as human shields.
Doctors stated a number of extra folks had been killed at one other school-turned-shelter within the northern metropolis of Beit Hanoun, which the United Nations says has been beneath siege by Israeli forces for greater than two months.
The UN stated it was monitoring experiences that greater than 1,500 folks had been just lately displaced after Israeli forces besieged and bombed the Khalil Aweida faculty.
The IDF stated on Sunday that its forces “performed a focused raid on a terrorist assembly level within the Beit Hanoun space.”
“In cooperation with the Israeli Air Force, troops struck dozens of terrorists each from the air and on the bottom, and different terrorists had been arrested,” he added.
![93fdb6c0 bba9 11ef aff0 072ce821b6ab.jpg Reuters journalists and other Palestinians mourn beside the body of Al Jazeera cameraman Ahmad Baker al-Louh after he was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza (16 December 2024)](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/b5bf/live/93fdb6c0-bba9-11ef-aff0-072ce821b6ab.jpg.webp)
Another assault hit a Civil Defense constructing within the Nuseirat city refugee camp in central Gaza.
Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Basal stated the strike killed the administrators of the Nuseirat and Sheikh Radwan facilities together with two volunteers, one in all whom he named Ahmad Baker al-Louh. Five different folks had been injured, three of them severely, he added.
“The Israeli occupation has as soon as once more demonstrated to the world that there is no such thing as a safety for humanitarian employees in Gaza and no adherence to worldwide humanitarian legislation,” he stated, including that 94 Civil Defense employees have been killed because the conflict started.
Ahmad al-Louh was a cameraman for the Qatar-based Al Jazeera community, which strongly condemned what it referred to as the “focused killing” of its journalist by Israel.
Louh was stated to have been masking a rescue operation by Civil Defense following an earlier strike on Sunday and that this got here “a number of days after the assault on his home”.
“The community calls on all human rights organizations and the media to sentence the systematic killing of journalists in chilly blood by the Israeli occupation, the evasion of accountability beneath worldwide humanitarian legislation and to deliver the perpetrators of this to justice heinous crime,” we learn in a press release.
The IDF stated the Civil Defense constructing was utilized by “terrorists to plan and execute an imminent terrorist assault towards IDF troops.”
“Among the terrorists eradicated within the assault was Islamic Jihad terrorist Ahmad Bakr al-Louh, who had beforehand served as a platoon commander within the Islamic Jihad Central Camps Brigade,” he stated, with out offering any proof.
Al Jazeera didn’t touch upon the Israeli accusations, however Louh’s cousin, Mahmoud, told the Associated Press: “We had been shocked by the declaration of Israeli occupation.”
“These statements are lies and deceptive to cowl up this crime,” he added.
The Committee to Protect Journalists says no less than 137 journalists and media employees have been killed in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Israel and Lebanon because the conflict started.