The Israeli military defended its strike over the weekend against a school in a Gaza City mosque, one serving as a shelter but which Israel says was also used as a command post by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
The Iran-backed Islamist groups decried the Aug. 10 attack, one the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said used “precise munitions,” for a death toll they’ve variously reported as 60, 80, 90, or 100 people.
Casualty figures released by Gaza health authorities, which Hamas controls, do not distinguish between civilians and members of the terror groups.
The IDF said early on Aug. 10 that it had struck “terrorists operating within a Hamas command and control center embedded in the Al Taba'een school and located adjacent to a mosque in Daraj Tuffah, which serves as a shelter for the residents of Gaza City.”
The IDF’s list of those connected to the groups climbed to 31. The IDF posted a graphic with the first 19 terrorists it had confirmed killed in the attack, and later updated it with a second graphic containing another 12.
“These terrorists operated in order to advance and carry out attacks against IDF soldiers and the state of Israel from inside the compound,” the IDF said.
One of the targets of the attack, the IDF said, was Ashraf Juda, commander of Islamic Jihad’s Central Camps Brigade. It said on Aug. 10 that there was a “high probability” that he was there but that it had not yet confirmed whether he was hit in the strike.
Hamas portrayed it as an attack on civilians.
“The Israeli strikes targeted the displaced people while performing Fajr [dawn] prayers,” which “led to a rapid increase in the number of casualties,” the Hamas-run Gaza government media office said.
The IDF said it had used three “precise munitions,” and posted before and after aerial photos it said demonstrated that it had not caused severe damage to the compound.
The IDF said it had taken numerous steps before the strike to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of a small warhead, aerial surveillance, and intelligence collection.
Hamas, it said, “systematically violates international law and operates from within civilian infrastructure and shelters, brutally exploiting the civilian population and institutions as human shields for their terrorist activities.”
Since July 31, Israel has been awaiting and preparing for a response by Iran’s Islamic regime and its proxies to the killing of Hezbollah military head Fuad Shukr outside Beirut the previous evening and the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran early that morning.
Israel claimed credit for the air strike that took out Shukr while remaining mum on the explosion of a planted bomb in the bedroom of the Tehran guest house where Haniyeh, in town for the inauguration of Iran’s new president, was staying.
Iran has sworn to retaliate. Its new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, told French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in a phone call on Aug. 7 that “Iran will never remain silent in the face of aggression against its interests and security,” according to Iranian state media.
World powers have urged Iranian restraint.
The United States has previously sent the USS Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group to the Gulf of Oman, close to where Houthi terrorists in Yemen have been firing at Allied and commercial shipping.
In response to the latest crisis, the United States has also dispatched the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group to the Mediterranean.
And the Pentagon said on Aug. 11 that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is sending the guided-missile submarine USS Georgia, an Ohio-class vessel armed with over 150 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles, to the Middle East.
The IDF, meanwhile, has not let up on its effort to destroy Hamas in Gaza. It continued attacks there over the weekend.
In southern Gaza’s Khan Yunis, the IDF said, its troops located weapons in an underground tunnel. And Israeli Air Force aircraft struck dozens of terrorist infrastructure sites. Among the terrorists it eliminated, it said, was one who participated in the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, plus commanders of Hamas engineering and sniper units.
On Aug. 11, it said it detected “exploitation of the humanitarian area” of Aljalaa in the northern part of Khan Yunis, with terrorists active there and firing rockets toward Israel from it. The IDF dropped flyers to warn civilians that the area was being “adjusted” and that they needed to evacuate temporarily as the IDF would be attacking the area, it said.
The IDF reported it had attacked about 30 Hamas targets on Aug. 10 and 11. The attacks included taking out a terrorist cell seen exiting a tunnel shaft in the Rafah area, striking another cell entering a military structure, and attacking an area where rockets had been launched the previous day against Kibbutz Kissufim.
It also took out an anti-tank missile launch post and weapons storage facilities.
