Gaza (Quds News Network)- The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said Israel’s military has attacked shelters hosting displaced people in Gaza 39 times so far in October.
In a report issued on Monday, the human rights group confirmed that the Israeli occupation forces have targeted shelter centers 39 times since the start of October, in a “dangerous increase in crimes targeting civilian gathering places, particularly in the northern Gaza Strip.”
These attacks aim to “forcefully displace the Palestinian population from the area, and have killed 188 people and injured hundreds more.”
Since the beginning of August 2024, the Israeli forces have targeted schools, hospitals, clinics, and shelter halls 65 times, including 39 times in the current month of October, killing 672 Palestinians and injuring over 1,000 more, according to the Euro-Med Monitor field team.
Fifty-seven of the targeted locations were located in Gaza City or the northern Gaza Strip, while the remaining eight were in the central part of the Strip.
The Israeli targeting has included shelling, direct shootings, killing forcibly displaced people and their families, or making them leave schools-turned-shelters under fire and/or with orders to evacuate. These schools are then burned or otherwise destroyed by Israeli forces in order to render them uninhabitable and stop displaced people from returning to them.
Euro-Med Monitor noted that Israel’s “systematic policy” of destroying shelters restricts the options available to residents in terms of places to seek refuge, which helps Israel “achieve its objectives of destroying and forcibly displacing Palestinians and altering the demographic makeup of the Strip.”
This is particularly apparent in northern Gaza, where Israeli officials with varying degrees of authority have made it clear they intend to annex and settle, the group added.
Israel’s targeting of shelters and ensuing waves of forced displacement in the north have caused dozens of Palestinian families to be “dispersed and their members to be separated from one another, which has doubled their psychological suffering, and especially that of the children.”
Targeting shelters is a crucial component of Israel’s strategy to continue to “weaken the social structures of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip; erode their physical and psychological well-being; and eradicate any communal areas that might, even in small ways, provide social and emotional support,” Euro-Med Monitor said.
On the afternoon of Sunday 27 October, the Israeli military bombed the Asmaa School in the Al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City. The school-turned-shelter was home to thousands of displaced people, and the bombing killed 11 Palestinians—including four journalists, two of whom were women—and injured dozens more. The Israeli air force had bombed the same school eight days prior, killing eight Palestinians and injuring others.
The Israeli air force had bombed the Shuhada Al-Nuseirat Secondary School for Boys earlier, on Tuesday 24 October. This school was home to thousands of displaced people in the central Gaza Strip’s Nuseirat refugee camp, and the bombing killed 18 Palestinians, including 12 children and three women, and injured 52 more. According to a review by the Euro-Med Monitor field team, none of the victims—which include 54-year-old professor Ashraf Yaqoub Al-Jadi, Dean of the Islamic University of Gaza’s Faculty of Nursing—were fighters.
At least 10 schools in northern Gaza are currently being evacuated by the Israeli occupation forces, which is also setting the majority of them on fire, the group said.
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Update
The death toll of the Israeli attack rose to 93 civilians, with more than 40 individuals still missing and dozens injured. The five-story building, home to the Abu Nasr family, housed over 200 residents, many of whom were women and children displaced from their neighborhoods.
This attack occurs alongside Israel’s ongoing strategy to dismantle the healthcare system in northern Gaza, which includes the destruction of four hospitals and the blockade of medical supplies. The Israeli military was fully aware that the building was occupied by vulnerable civilians.