GAZA: Rescuers in Gaza said a Zionist air strike on a religious school housing displaced Palestinians killed 93 people on Saturday, sparking international condemnation. The toll is one of the largest from a single strike during 10 months of war between the Zionist entity and Hamas Palestinian fighters. Hamas denounced the “dangerous escalation” in north Gaza, while the Palestinian group’s Lebanese ally Hezbollah called it a “horrific massacre”.

Civil defense rescuers in Gaza said three Zionist missiles hit Al-Tabieen religious school in Gaza City while people performed dawn prayers. “Their bodies were torn apart,” civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP. “It reminds us of the first days of the war in the Gaza Strip.” With nearly all of Gaza’s 2.4 million people displaced during the war, many have sought refuge in school buildings, which have been hit at least 14 times since July 6, according to an AFP tally.

Kuwait’s ministry of foreign affairs strongly deplored Saturday the Zionist occupation’s bombardment of the school. In a statement, the ministry said that the act is a blatant violation of international law and international humanitarian law as well as relevant UN Security Council resolutions.

The ministry reiterated the need for the international community and the Security Council’s intervention to halt these gruesome crimes committed against unarmed people, it added. It further demanded providing civil protection for unarmed Palestinians and compelling the occupying entity to comply with international resolutions in this regard.

Jordan’s foreign ministry said the timing was an indication of the Zionist entity’s efforts to “obstruct and thwart” the peace push. One of the mediators, Qatar, called for an “urgent international investigation” into strikes on school shelters. Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry expressed “condemnation in the strongest terms” and stressed “the need to stop the mass massacres” in Gaza.

GAZA: Displaced Palestinians watch as first responders prepare to transport corpses of people killed in a Zionist strike on a school in Gaza City on Aug 10, 2024. - AFP photos

An injured man mourns over the corpses of members of his family, killed in an overnight Zionist strike that hit their home in Nuseirat, in the yard of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on Aug 10, 2024.

Iran condemned the “barbaric” Zionist strike, saying the strike was “a clear example of the simultaneous perpetration of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity” by the Zionist entity. Turkey decried a “new crime against humanity” and claimed Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted “to sabotage ceasefire negotiations”.

“(The Zionist entity) is genociding the Palestinians one neighborhood 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,” Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, said on social media platform X.

The Zionist entity was carrying out such strikes against Palestinians using “US and European weapons”, Albanese said. “May the Palestinians forgive us for our collective inability to protect them,” she added. In a report issued in March, Albanese said there were “reasonable grounds” to determine that the Zionist entity had committed several acts of genocide in its war in Gaza.

Washington will provide the Zionist entity $3.5 billion to spend on US weapons and military equipment, the State Department said on Friday, with the release of the money coming months after the US Congress appropriated it during the Zionist entity’s war in Gaza. CNN reported earlier on the release of this amount which comes from a $14 billion supplemental funding bill for the Zionist entity passed by the Congress in April.

The European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell said the school strike left him “horrified”, adding that there is “no justification for these massacres”. France said “(The Zionist entity) must respect international humanitarian law”. “For several weeks, school buildings have been repeatedly targeted, with an intolerable number of civilian victims,” the French foreign ministry said. Britain’s top diplomat David Lammy said on X: “We need an immediate ceasefire to protect civilians, free all hostages, and end restrictions on aid.”

In a rare intervention on Saturday, Iraq’s top Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, denounced “crimes” including the latest school strike and the senior militants’ killings which, he said, risk “catastrophic consequences”. Sistani urged an end to the genocidal war in Gaza. “Once again, the (Zionist) occupation army has committed a huge massacre... adding to its series of ongoing crimes” in Gaza, Sistani said in a rare statement since the start of the 10-month-old war. “We once again call on the world to stand against this terrible brutality,” Sistani said, urging Muslims “to unite in order to press for an end to the genocidal war” in Gaza.

“Those who were inside the mosque were all killed. Even the floor above, where women and children were sleeping, was completely burned,” local resident Abu Wassim said. Hamas has always denied using schools, hospitals and other civilian facilities for military aims. The attack left dead and wounded strewn around the ground floor of the two-storey complex with a courtyard, where debris lay inside and out, AFPTV images showed. The upper floor was partially blown out and charred.

Images showed white-shrouded bodies, blood stains on the ground, and smoke rising from the rubble. The Zionist military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 39,790 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry, mostly women and children. Bassal told a press conference that 11 children and six women were among those killed at the school shelter, “and there are many unidentified body parts.”

Iran last week accused the Zionist entity of wanting to spread war in the Middle East, while Hamas officials, some analysts and critics in the Zionist entity have said Netanyahu seeks to prolong the fighting. However, Netanyahu’s office on Thursday said the Zionist entity would send negotiators “to conclude the details of implementing a deal”, after the joint invitation from the United States, Egypt and Qatar. They invited the warring parties to resume talks on August 15 to swiftly implement an agreement, after intense diplomacy aimed at averting a region-wide conflagration.

The killing on July 31 of Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh during a visit to Tehran had sidelined truce talks. Iran’s mission to the United Nations on Saturday said the Islamic Republic has “the legitimate right to self-defense” after its sovereignty was “violated”. “However, we hope that our response will be timed and conducted in a manner not to the detriment of the potential ceasefire,” it said. Haniyeh’s death came hours after a Zionist strike on south Beirut killed Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s military chief. Hamas ally Hezbollah has been trading near-daily cross-border fire with Zionist forces. – Agencies