GAZA/JERUSALEM, Dec. 14 (Xinhua) -- At least 30 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes on a municipal building, three schools housing displaced people, and residential houses in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources said Saturday.
Israeli aircraft targeted the Deir al-Balah municipality building in central Gaza, local sources and eyewitnesses told Xinhua. Medics told Xinhua that the airstrike killed at least 10 people and wounded dozens of others.
The medics said that among the dead was the mayor of Deir al-Balah, Diab al-Jarou, and they expected the number of dead and wounded to rise.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed the attack, saying the mayor was a Hamas militant in a compound used to plan and execute attacks against IDF troops and Israel in the humanitarian area in Deir al-Balah.
Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes targeted the "Al-Majida Wasila" school sheltering displaced people in Al-Jalaa Street in Gaza City with at least one missile, according to local sources and eyewitnesses.
Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for the Gaza Civil Defense, told Xinhua that the raid killed seven people and injured 20 others.
Ambulance and Civil Defense workers transferred the casualties to hospitals in the city, Basal said, noting that among the victims was a mother and her newborn baby.
Also on Saturday, Israeli warplanes bombed the "Holy Family" school sheltering displaced people in the northern Al-Rimal neighborhood in Gaza City, killing at least two Palestinians and injuring several others, according to Basal.
Basal added that an Israeli airstrike on the "Yaffa" school in the Al-Tuffah neighborhood in eastern Gaza City, which housed dozens of displaced families, killed two people and injured several others.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement on Saturday that the Israeli Air Force conducted a "precise strike" on Hamas militants who were planning to commit "terror" attacks against IDF troops operating in the Gaza Strip and against Israeli territory in the immediate future.
The militants were operating inside a command-and-control center embedded within a compound that previously served as the "Yaffa" school, it added.
Mohammed Balousha, a journalist working for Palestinian websites, was also killed when Israeli aircraft bombed his home in northern Gaza, according to medical sources.
With the killing of Balousha, the number of journalists killed since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict last year has topped 190, according to a statement issued by the Hamas-run Gaza government media office.
In the Jabalia area in northern Gaza, paramedics told Xinhua that medical workers recovered the bodies of four people as a result of an Israeli bombing of a residential house.
Local sources told Xinhua that an Israeli drone fired at Kamal Adwan Hospital, while the Israeli army burned and blew up dozens of homes in the Beit Lahia area.
In the city of Rafah, in the far south of the Strip, the Civil Defense Authority said in a press statement that its workers recovered the bodies of two people who were killed in an airstrike targeting Khirbet al-Adas north of the city.
Eyewitnesses said the Israeli army has been carrying out operations to blow up a number of homes in the Shaboura refugee camp in central Rafah since the morning hours.
In eastern Khan Younis, southern Gaza, Palestinian medical sources said two brothers were killed in an Israeli targeting of a Palestinian gathering east of the town of Abasan al-Jadida.
Israel has been launching a large-scale offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip to retaliate against a Hamas rampage through the southern Israeli border on Oct. 7, 2023, during which about 1,200 people were killed and about 250 taken hostage.
The Palestinian death toll from ongoing Israeli attacks in Gaza has risen to 44,930, Gaza-based health authorities said in a statement on Saturday. ■
