Salma Saud was sleeping at the Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz School in Khan Younis when rubble and debris fell on her.
“I was scared and thought maybe that was it,” the 19-year-old told CBC News.
The debris came from an Israeli attack on the United Nations-run school. At least 20 displaced Palestinians sheltering in the building were killed when Israel bombed the building without warning, survivors said.
“My sister lost consciousness… (and) my mother, when I cleared the rubble, I knew she had been martyred,” Saud said.
“I lost my father before today… and today I lost my mother.”
Survivors say the attack hit the building around 9:30 p.m. Many there, including 30-year-old Khitam Al-Tarawsa, sought refuge in the school after Israeli attacks forced them to flee several times.
“The kids were panicking, and even us adults were panicking,” she said. “We started running in the middle of the night and found three or four classrooms stacked on top of each other and there were martyrs.”
The attack was one of several Israeli weekend raids in the besieged area, including in Beit Hanoon and Deir el-Balah.
Elsewhere, an airstrike hit the civilian emergency center in the Nuseirat market area in the central Gaza Strip, killing Ahmed Al-Louh, a video journalist for Al Jazeera TV, and five other people, medics and fellow journalists said.
According to medical experts, five people, including children, were killed in another attack on a house in the Nuseirat camp.
Amnesty International has accused the State of Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza war in a new report. Israel vehemently rejected this accusation and said it had respected international law.
The Israeli military said it had targeted sites used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants operating from the Civil Defense’s Nuseirat office in Gaza. However, those affected by the strikes dispute that the vast majority of those killed were women and children.
“We were just sitting in our houses, innocent people in their space. Suddenly they saw the bomb landing in the middle of the room,” said Khaldiya Tafesh, who lost her son and seven grandchildren in the UN school attack.
“No one was wanted or anything.”
“I lost everyone”
Al-Tarawsa and her family were taken to Nasser Hospital after the Israeli attack, but returned to the school in the morning to survey the damage.
She said everything was destroyed, “nothing is in one piece, no furniture left.”
Survivors say Israel did not warn them before the attack, so many people in the building were sleeping when the bomb hit.
“The bomb hit and we don’t know where it came from or who was affected,” Al-Tarawsa said. “Our heads are hurting so far.”
The attack left a bloody scene for survivors and medical staff. Al-Tarawsa says shrapnel from the attack hit her and her children, who were sitting near the site of the bombing.
Elsewhere in the building, 23-year-old Bisan Azdoudi said she saw her loved ones’ brains flying out of their heads.
“I lost my uncle, I lost everyone. There’s no one left for me,” she said. “I tried to pull my brothers and sisters out from under the rubble. There’s no one left.”
Sharif Awda says they brought women and children to the hospital in pieces as the strike and its impact tore them apart.
“We never thought they would attack this school,” he said. “If you were going to attack a UNRWA school, you should warn them.”
Death toll over 45,000: Ministry of Health
Gaza’s Health Ministry updated the death toll on Monday to 45,028 people, with 106,962 more injured since the war began.
The official number of victims is around two percent of the entire pre-war population of 2.3 million people in the Gaza Strip. But officials say the actual number is higher because thousands of bodies are still buried under rubble or in areas where paramedics cannot access.
Israel claims Hamas is responsible for the civilian death toll because it operates from civilian areas in the densely populated Gaza Strip. But human rights groups and Palestinians say Israel has not taken sufficient precautions to avoid civilian deaths.
The Israeli military says it has killed more than 17,000 militants without providing evidence. Gaza’s health ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count, but said more than half of the fatalities were women and children.
In addition, UN organizations, the International Committee of the Red Cross and even the United States have used Ministry of Health figures in the past.
As the death toll climbs, efforts for a ceasefire have increased in recent weeks after repeatedly stalling. Qatar, Egypt and the US have renewed their efforts to reach an agreement at the highest level in recent days. Mediators said there appeared to be greater willingness on both sides to reach a ceasefire.
Al-Tarawsa says she no longer has the energy to cope with Israel’s constant attacks, which have been ongoing since Hamas militants stormed Israel on October 7, 2023. Israel says that attack killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took about 240 hostages back to Gaza.
“We are tired of the bombings and the war,” Al-Tarawsa said.
“We live here, yes, but there is no security. We live between walls, no door is safe, no window is safe. Nothing is certain.”
