Every 70 kg counts as one person
TEHRAN - A new Israeli massacre on a school in Gaza sheltering the displaced Palestinians has raised major question marks over Tel Aviv’s lack of desire for any ceasefire in the enclave.
On Saturday morning, at least two airstrikes on the Tabeen school in Gaza City (northern Gaza Strip), killed over 100 people, according to the Gaza media office.
Women and children are among those brutalized when the munitions landed as Palestinians were gathering for morning prayers.
The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) claimed to have used precision-guided munitions when launching the attack on the 309th day of carnage in the coastal strip.
The pictures on the ground indicate the IOF launched missiles or dropped bombs that were anything but precision-guided.
Witnesses and Palestinian officials at the scene of the carnage said they did not find a single body that had not had limbs severed by the Israeli attack at the school.
Hospital officials also said the identification of many victims is very difficult because their remains are badly disfigured.
Every 70 kilogram has been counted as one martyr because many body parts have been scattered.
Footage shows the IOF did not take any steps to mitigate civilian harm including aerial surveillance and intelligence gathering before the atrocity took place, further contradicting the Israeli military’s narrative.
Other footage from the site of the massacre shows a scene of carnage with scores of bodies and body parts. Survivors and families look clearly distraught and traumatized at the loss of life and destruction.
The Israeli massacres against civilians have become so recurrent that Western media is failing to keep pace with them.
This is while the death toll from the genocidal war on the enclave that houses 2.3 million population is approaching 40,000.
Critics have criticized Arab states for their inaction in the face of the Israeli war crimes in Gaza that have been continuing for more than ten months. They say issuing statements of condemnation has proven ineffective.
Arab states have the means to press the West to end support for the Israeli genocide in their backyard by limiting the sale of natural resources or withdrawing the normalization deals with the apartheid regime.
Tel Aviv has banned Western media from entering Gaza in what is widely believed to be an Israeli attempt to avoid the documentation of the regime’s war crimes, including the recent disturbing reports of systematic torture against Palestinians held in Israeli military prisons and detention centers.
Reporters on the ground from regional news networks have reported about the new massacre in the Tabeen school in the Daraj neighborhood of Gaza City.
The Gaza government media office confirmed the IOF carried out a massacre inside the Tabeen school, saying this act is part of a “clear crime of genocide and ethnic cleansing against our Palestinian people”.
In a statement on Saturday, it emphasized that the IOF directly targeted the displaced individuals while they were performing the Fajr (dawn) prayer, which “increased the number of martyrs rapidly”.
“Due to the magnitude of the massacre and the large number of dead, medical teams, civil defense, and rescue teams have not yet been able to retrieve all the bodies.” The media office said.
It also condemned the massacre in the strongest terms, calling on the world to denounce it and hold the Israeli occupation and the U.S. administration fully responsible.
The spokesman for the Civil Defense in Gaza said the occupation regime attacked two floors of the school, with the first floor sheltering women and the ground floor being a prayer area for the displaced.
He added that the Israeli bombing set fire to the bodies of Palestinians, and “teams are trying to control the fire to retrieve the martyrs’ bodies and rescue the injured”.
The spokesman also underlined that many of the bodies from the prayer hall bombing were “mangled and burned remains”.
He noted that there are still large amounts of remains and dismembered bodies inside the Al-Ahli Hospital, and families are struggling to identify their loved ones as most of the injured transferred to the hospital are in very critical condition.
The Gaza Civil Defense stated that it believed the casualty figures have become mere numbers due to the international community’s failure to pressure the Zionist occupation regime to stop its crimes.
One journalist told regional media that the IOF used three missiles, each weighing more than 2,000 pounds, in its attack on the school.
The latest atrocity has raised doubts again over whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is interested in a ceasefire.
Earlier this week, the United States, backed by its Western allies proposed a new round of talks supposedly aimed at ending the war in the Gaza Strip that has suffered daily aggression for more than 300 consecutive days.
Critics argue the ongoing round of talks, over the past months, has clearly outlined the terms of Hamas and Tel Aviv and that a ceasefire could have been reached many times before if Washington had restricted its regular arms shipments to the Israeli military.
These are the same U.S.-made munitions that have been dropped on more than a dozen schools, sheltering displaced Palestinians in July alone.
Earlier this year, Hamas agreed to a ceasefire deal that was rejected by the Netanyahu cabinet.
The U.S. proposal has raised eyebrows on whether Washington’s real intentions are to end the Gaza genocide or lay the grounds to blame the Iranian retaliation for the assassination of Hamas political bureau chief Esmael Haniyeh in Tehran, for jeopardizing a ceasefire attempt.
Iranian officials have emphasized the response to Haniyeh’s assassination is a separate matter from any ceasefire in Gaza, which would have the full backing of the Islamic Republic, should it actually materialize.