A Dawn Massacre: Over 100 Civilians Killed in Israeli Airstrike on Gaza School
The morning call to prayer was supposed to be a source of comfort, a moment of peace in the heart of war-torn Gaza. Instead, the courtyard of the Al-Tofaila school, a sanctuary for displaced families in the Al-Daraj neighborhood, became a scene of unimaginable horror.
As dawn broke on that Saturday, families who had sought refuge in the school awoke to the piercing cries of the wounded and the chilling silence of the dead. The Israeli airstrike, executed during the pre-dawn hours, had ripped through the school, leaving behind a trail of devastation.
The death toll, a grim testament to the brutality of the attack, climbed past 100. Body parts, mangled beyond recognition, were carefully collected and placed in bags. The injured, many clinging to life, overwhelmed the already strained medical facilities in Gaza.
Eyewitnesses described scenes of unimaginable carnage. “After the Zionist bombing of the Al-Tofaila school, the bodies of the citizens were set on fire,” one survivor recounted, his voice trembling with grief and anger.
The stories emerging from the rubble are almost too horrific to comprehend. One witness spoke of the overwhelming stench of death, the heart-wrenching cries of families searching for loved ones, and the sheer terror that gripped the survivors.
Rescue workers, their faces etched with exhaustion and despair, struggled to navigate the debris-strewn courtyard. The force of the blast had obliterated entire families, leaving behind only fragments of lives cut tragically short. The task of identifying the dead, a solemn duty made even more harrowing by the scale of the destruction, proved near impossible.
Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Civil Defense, described the attack as “one of the most heinous massacres since the beginning of the war.” He confirmed that the school was struck by “three highly incendiary missiles,” resulting in the catastrophic loss of life.
The Palestinian government condemned the attack as a “clear act of genocide and ethnic cleansing.” They emphasized that the Israeli military “directly bombed the displaced people during their dawn prayers,” leading to the staggering death toll.
Adding insult to injury, the Israeli military attempted to justify the attack, claiming that the school housed a Hamas command center. This claim, widely disputed by international observers and human rights groups, rings hollow in the face of the overwhelming evidence of civilian casualties.
The Al-Tofaila school massacre is a stark reminder of the human cost of the ongoing conflict in Gaza. It is a tragedy compounded by the international community’s failure to hold the perpetrators accountable and ensure the protection of innocent civilians.
