Gaza rescuers say charred bodies recovered as Israeli strikes kill 17

GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defence agency on Wednesday said its crew recovered charred bodies from a school-turned-shelter for displaced people, as Israeli strikes killed 17 people in the Hamas-run territory since dawn.

Israel resumed its military campaign in Gaza on March 18, following the collapse of a two-month ceasefire that had largely halted the fighting in the besieged Palestinian territory.

“Seventeen people have been killed since dawn,” civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

He said 11 of the victims, which included women and children, died in an air strike targeting the Yafa school building in Gaza City’s Al-Tuffah neighbourhood.

“The school was housing displaced people. The bombing sparked a massive blaze, and several charred bodies have since been recovered,” he said.

Since the war began following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, tens of thousands of displaced Gazans have sought refuge in schools to escape the violence.

Aid agencies estimate that the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents have been displaced at least once since the war began.

Bassal said his crew has received distress calls from several areas in Gaza.

“We lack the necessary tools and equipment to carry out effective rescue operations or recover the bodies of martyrs,” he added. On Tuesday, the Israeli military stated that it had targeted approximately 40 “engineering vehicles”, alleging they were being used for “terror purposes”.

Bassal said air strikes destroyed bulldozers and other equipment needed to “clear debris and recover the bodies of martyrs from beneath the rubble”, as well as to “save lives, pull people from the rubble”.

Elsewhere in Gaza, additional fatalities were reported on Wednesday.

A child was killed in an air strike on a home in the northern Jabalia area, and another individual was killed in a similar incident in the southern city of Khan Yunis, the civil defence said.

Gaza healthcare faces collapse as Israel steps up Gaza strikes

Four more people were killed in Israeli shelling of homes in eastern Gaza City. Several others remain trapped beneath the rubble, according to Bassal.

The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the latest strikes.

Since Israel’s military campaign resumed, at least 1,890 people have been killed in Gaza, bringing the total death toll since the war erupted to at least 51,266, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

Hamas’s attack on Israel in 2023 that ignited the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.