October 2024 Abu Hussein School Attack

On 17 October 2024, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) struck the Abu Hussein primary school, a facility run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) that had been converted into a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the Gaza war. The school is located in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. According to reporting on the strike, at least 28 Palestinians were killed and more than 160 others were wounded.

The strike occurred amid a broader IDF ground offensive in Jabalia, which had begun on 5 October 2024. The stated aim of that offensive was to eliminate Hamas militants that Israel said were regrouping in the area. Israel also imposed a siege on Jabalia and restricted the entry of humanitarian aid, a situation the Palestinian envoy to the United Nations described as "a genocide within genocide."

The IDF said the airstrike targeted militants from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) who it said were operating from within the school building. The Israeli military named 18 men it accused of carrying out rocket attacks and attacking IDF soldiers. Israel stated that it had taken steps to reduce civilian harm, including using aerial surveillance and a precision munition in the strike.

Hamas rejected the Israeli claim that the school had been used for military purposes, describing the allegation as "nothing but lies" and calling it part of a "systematic policy of the enemy to justify its crime." The director of Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia said the facility was too small to receive all of the people injured in the strike, and that most of those brought in were women and children. He also said there was no water available to extinguish resulting fires and characterized the attack as a massacre. Several tents at the site caught fire, producing rising smoke. A Gaza health ministry official said, "Civilians and children are being killed, burned under fire." At least five children were reported killed in the strike.