Salma Saud was sleeping in Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz School in Khan Yunis when rubble and debris fell on top of her.
“I got scared and thought maybe this was it,” the 19-year-old told CBC News.
The rubble was caused by an Israeli raid on the UN-run school. Survivors said that at least 20 displaced Palestinians who were sheltering in the building were killed when Israel bombed the building without warning.
Saud said: “My sister lost consciousness… (and) my mother, as soon as I removed the rubble, I knew that she had been martyred.”
“I lost my father before today…and today I lost my mother.”
Survivors say the strike hit the building at around 9:30 p.m. Many there, including 30-year-old Khitam Al-Tarosa, were taking refuge in the school after Israeli attacks forced them to flee several times.
“The children were terrified, and even us adults were terrified,” she said. “We started running at midnight and found three or four classrooms that had fallen on top of each other and there were martyrs.”
The raid was one of several Israeli attacks carried out over the weekend across besieged territories, including Beit Hanoun and Deir al-Balah.
Elsewhere, medics and fellow journalists said that an air strike hit the civil emergency center in the Nuseirat market area in the central Gaza Strip, killing Ahmed Al-Louh, a video journalist for Al Jazeera, and five other people.
Another attack on a house in the Nuseirat camp led to the death of five people, including children, according to medics.
Amnesty International has accused the State of Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza war in a new report, an allegation that Israel has strongly denied, saying it respects international law.
The Israeli army said it targeted sites used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists working from the Nuseirat office of the Gaza Civil Defense. But those affected by the strikes confirmed that the vast majority of those killed were women and children.
Khalidiya Tafesh, who lost her son and seven of her grandchildren in the raid on the UN school, said: “We were sitting in our homes, with innocent people in their space. Suddenly, they saw the bomb falling in the middle of the room.”
“No one was wanted or anything.”
“I lost everyone”
Al-Tarousa and her family fled to Nasser Hospital after the Israeli attack, but they returned to the school in the morning to assess the damage.
She said that everything was destroyed, “nothing is left in one piece, and there is no furniture left.”
Survivors say Israel did not warn them before the attack, so many in the building were asleep when the bomb fell.
Al-Tarousa said: “The bomb fell and we do not know where or who was affected.” “Even now, our heads hurt.”
The attack left a bloody scene for survivors and medical workers. Al-Tarosa says that shrapnel from the attack hit her and her children, who were sitting near the bombing site.
Elsewhere in the building, Bisan Azdoudi, 23, says she saw her loved ones’ brains flying out of their heads.
She said: “I lost my uncle, I lost everyone. I have no one left.” “I tried to pull my brothers and sisters out from under the rubble. There was no one left.”
Sherif Odeh says that they were transporting women and children to the hospital, where the strike and its impact dispersed them.
“We never imagined they would hit this school,” he said. “If you are going to attack an UNRWA school, you have to warn them.”
Ministry of Health: The number of deaths is more than 45 thousand
The Gaza Ministry of Health updated the death toll to 45,028 people on Monday, in addition to 106,962 wounded since the beginning of the war.
The official toll is about 2% of Gaza’s total pre-war population of 2.3 million, although officials say the real toll is higher because thousands of bodies remain buried under rubble or in areas where rescuers cannot reach.
Israel claims Hamas is responsible for the civilian death toll because it operates from within civilian areas in the densely populated Gaza Strip, but human rights groups and Palestinians say Israel failed to take adequate precautions to avoid civilian deaths.
The Israeli army says it killed more than 17,000 militants without providing evidence. The Ministry of Health in Gaza does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its statistics, but it said that more than half of the dead were women and children.
Moreover, the United Nations agencies and the International Committee of the Red Cross and And even the United States Department of Health figures have been used in the past.
With the death toll increasing, efforts to reach a ceasefire have accelerated in recent weeks after repeatedly faltering. Qatar, Egypt and the United States have renewed their efforts to broker a deal at high levels in recent days. Mediators said there appears to be greater willingness on both sides to reach a ceasefire.
Al-Tarusah says it no longer has the energy to deal with the ongoing Israeli attacks, which have continued since Hamas militants stormed Israel on October 7, 2023. Israel says the attack killed about 1,200 people in Israel and about 240 were taken hostage. Return to Gaza.
“We are tired of bombings and war,” Al-Tarousa said.
“We live here, yes, but there is no safety. We live between walls, there is no safe door, no safe window. Nothing is safe.”
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