Word – Carnage at Gaza School Compound Adds to Mounting Death Toll at U.N. Buildings

The soccer ball went out of bounds and the goalkeeper was lofting it toward his teammates as dozens of people looked on from the sidelines of the courtyard. It was a moment of respite in the Gaza Strip — but it did not last. Before the ball reached the ground, a large boom shook the yard, sending players and spectators fleeing in frenzied panic.

The Gazan authorities say that at least 27 people were killed on Tuesday in that explosion, which was caused by an Israeli airstrike near the entrance to a school turned shelter on the outskirts of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.

Iyad Qadeh, who was sitting outside his home near the school property, said the day had been calm, without drones buzzing overhead. Then a warplane appeared and fired a missile toward a group of young men sitting at an internet cafe, he said.

“After that, it was screams and body parts everywhere,” Mr. Qadeh said.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the U.N. agency that helps Palestinians, UNRWA, said on Wednesday that it was the fourth strike in four days to hit or damage a school building in Gaza. Two-thirds of U.N. school buildings in the enclave have been hit since the start of the war, with more than 500 people killed, UNRWA said.

The Israeli military said the strike on Tuesday had been targeting a Hamas member who took part in the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel that set off the war. It did not release details on the identity of the Hamas member or whether the target had been killed. The military said it was “looking into reports that civilians were harmed.”

The explosion came amid a week of punishing airstrikes and fighting across the Gaza Strip, with the Israeli military urging people in Gaza City to once again flee and mediators once again seeking to advance cease-fire talks.

Most of those injured or killed in the strike on Tuesday were taken to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis by ambulance, private vehicle or donkey cart. The condition of the bodies made it difficult to determine the identities of the dead or even the number, Dr. Mohammed Saqer, the director general of nursing at Nasser, said in a phone interview on Wednesday.

“There were 56 wounded, and most of them were children and women,” Dr. Saqer said. Around 10 people underwent amputations. “Hands and feet completely blown off,” he added.

With most of the territory’s 2.2 million residents driven from their homes by the Israeli bombardment and ground assault, school buildings have become critical shelters for Palestinians in Gaza. The Israeli military has claimed that militants are using shelters and other civilian infrastructure to hide themselves and their activities.

A video of the soccer match capturing the moment of the strike on Tuesday at Al Awda School, which was shared by Al Jazeera and verified by The New York Times, is one of the more harrowing of the war.

The person shooting the video runs toward the entrance of the school, and the camera pans across a scene of devastation. Shredded bodies lie on the ground amid debris, and desperate screams can be heard. “Oh, God,” someone yells.

More than a dozen miles north of the school, there were signs on Wednesday that the renewed fighting, which Israel says is intended to crack down on a resurgent Hamas insurgency, would continue.

The Israeli military said in the evening that it was withdrawing forces from one Gaza City neighborhood, Shajaiye, even as it called for Palestinians across the city to evacuate. Israeli troops sent ground forces into Shajaiye late last month, and the fighting then expanded to other parts of the city.

The military said that it had concluded its operation in Shajaiye, but it gave little indication that the end of operations there meant that its seemingly endless fight against Palestinian militants was close to a conclusion.

“Gaza City will remain a dangerous combat zone,” the military said in a statement.

After more than nine months of war, U.S. officials and regional mediators were still trying to narrow the wide gaps between Israel and Hamas in cease-fire talks.

A delegation of senior Israeli officials was expected in Qatar on Wednesday for further negotiations on a truce and hostage release deal. The delegation was to include David Barnea, the head of the Mossad intelligence agency; and Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s Shin Bet internal security service, according to Majed al-Ansari, the spokesman for Qatar’s Foreign Ministry, and an Israeli official familiar with the matter.

The Israeli security chiefs were also expected to meet with William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, and with the Qatari prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, they said. Mr. al-Ansari described the talks as “progressing positively” in recent weeks but said, “We are by no means out of the woods.”

The top White House official for Middle East affairs was also in Israel on Wednesday, where he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the defense minister. In a short statement, Mr. Netanyahu’s office said he and the official, Brett McGurk, had discussed cease-fire negotiations, during which the Israeli leader said he was committed to the process “as long as Israel’s red lines are preserved.”

Mr. Netanyahu has long insisted that the war must continue until Israel has destroyed Hamas’s military and governing abilities.

As cease-fire negotiations drag on, Israeli troops continue to return to fight in places in Gaza they had once deemed secure.

In January, the Israeli military dialed back the intensity of its military operation in Gaza City and the rest of the north. But since then, Israeli forces have carried out a series of targeted campaigns in the area. In March, its troops raided Al Shifa hospital for a second time, killing nearly 200 people it called “terrorists” and leaving devastation behind after extended gun battles with Palestinian militants.

It is not clear how many Hamas fighters remain in Gaza City.

In statements on social media, Hamas has said over the past few days that its forces were fighting Israeli troops in Shajaiye and Tel al-Hawa. In Shajaiye alone, Israel claims its troops have eliminated “more than 150 terrorists” over the past week and have destroyed six underground tunnels.

The bombardments in Gaza come at a time when the few still-functioning hospitals there are struggling to stay open amid a lack of medicine, medical equipment and reliable power. “Many of our medical staff have been detained, many have been killed and many have had to leave Gaza,” Dr. Saqer said.

There is also a shortage of hospital beds. Most of the airstrike victims on Tuesday were treated on the floors of wards or in the hallways, Dr. Saqer said.

A video taken by Reuters appeared to indicate the type of bomb used in the strike.

Two weapons experts — Trevor Ball, a former U.S. Army explosive ordnance disposal technician, and Patrick Senft, a weapons expert at the consulting firm Armament Research Services — identified fragments seen in the video as coming from a “small diameter” bomb known as a GBU-39.

The precision-guided bomb, which is U.S.-made, weighs about 250 pounds and is increasingly the weapon of choice for the Israeli military. Two of them were used in a deadly strike on a tent camp in Rafah on May 26.

In Gaza, such bombs “are often used to target specific floors in buildings, penetrating through the roof before detonating,” Mr. Ball said.

But he said that while they are smaller in explosive power than the 2,000-pound bombs that have been used elsewhere in Gaza, the bombs “can still cause significant injury and death, especially when used in areas where there is little to no protection for people from blast and fragmentation effects, such as a street, or area with just tents.”

Raja Abdulrahim reported from Jerusalem, and Thomas Fuller from San Francisco. Reporting was contributed by Malachy Browne, Sanjana Varghese, Aaron Boxerman and Ameera Harouda.