Hamama School bombing

On 4 August 2024, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bombed the Hamama School in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City. At the time, the school was being used as a shelter for people displaced by the ongoing Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, including women and children. According to Gaza's Civil Defense, 17 people were killed and "many others" were wounded in the strike, and the school building itself was "completely destroyed." The attack is counted among a broader series of strikes on school buildings during the Israeli invasion of Gaza.

The Israeli military stated that the school was being used by Hamas to plan and carry out attacks against Israeli forces, and to manufacture and store weapons. Hamas rejected this characterization, describing it as a false pretext for "targeting defenseless civilians," and called the attack a continuation of what it termed Israel's "brutal war of extermination" in Gaza.

The strike on Hamama School followed a pattern of attacks on schools sheltering displaced Palestinians in the preceding weeks. On 6 July 2024, an IDF raid targeted the UNRWA-run al-Jawni school at the Nuseirat refugee camp, which was sheltering roughly 2,000 refugees, killing sixteen Palestinians. The following day, 7 July, IDF forces struck the Holy Family School, owned by the Latin Patriarchate and located in Gaza City, housing hundreds of refugees, killing four people. On 8 July, IDF forces struck a separate UNRWA-run school in Nuseirat, causing injuries that required hospital treatment. Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, stated that two-thirds of all UNRWA schools in the Gaza Strip had been hit since October 2023.

The attack on Hamama School occurred against the backdrop of a United Nations Security Council resolution adopted on 25 March 2024 that had demanded an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza war, and coincided with ongoing truce talks taking place in Egypt.

According to the account of the attack, Israeli aircraft first struck the Hamama School with a missile. As first responders worked to rescue victims of this initial strike, three additional missiles were fired at the school, killing more people and trapping some victims under rubble — a tactic described as commonly used by the Israeli military. No warning was reportedly given prior to the first strike. Women and children were among those killed and wounded. Gaza's Civil Defense stated that the Hamama School was targeted alongside the adjacent al-Huda School, with which it shares a playground.