Hamama School bombing
On 4 August 2024, the Israel Defense Forces bombed Hamama School in the Gaza neighborhood of Sheikh Radwan. The school had been sheltering people displaced by the Gaza Strip, including women and children. Per Gaza's Civil Defense, 17 people were killed and "many others" were wounded, while the school itself was "completely destroyed". The attack was one of a number of attacks on schools during the Israeli invasion of Gaza. The Israeli army stated that the school was being used by Hamas to plan and carry out attacks against Israeli troops, as well as to manufacture and store weapons. Hamas criticized this claim as a false pretext "for targeting defenseless civilians". The Palestinian Resistance Movement called the attack a continuation of Israel's "brutal war of extermination" in Gaza.
Background
On 6 July, UNRWA-ran al-Jawni school sheltering 2,000 refugees at the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza was targeted by an IDF raid which killed sixteen Palestinians. On 7 July, the IDF targeted the Latin Patriarchate-owned Holy Family school located in Gaza City housing hundreds of refugees, killing four. On 8 July, IDF force struck a different Nuseirat UNRWA-run school in, causing several injuries requiring treatment in a local hospital. Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, stated two-thirds of all UNRWA schools in Gaza had been hit since October 2023.A United Nations Security Council Resolution adopted on 25 March 2024 had demanded an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas War. The attack on the Hamama School coincided with truce talks in Egypt.