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Israeli airstrike hits girls’ school that houses displaced people in central Gaza, killing at least 30
At least 30 people were killed after Israeli airstrikes hit a girls’ school that houses displaced people in central Gaza, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said Saturday.
Israel’s military said it targeted a Hamas command and control center used to store weapons and plan attacks in Deir Al-Balah, one of the areas most populated with displaced families.
CBS News’ team in Gaza reported many women and children were among the casualties.
The Gaza health ministry said at least 11 other people were killed in separate attacks.
Anas Zeyad Fteha/Anadolu via Getty Images
The CBS News team in Gaza confirmed that there were multiple strikes in the vicinity of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al-Balah, which is near the school.
Near the hospital, an injured man lay on a stretcher on the ground. A body covered with a blanket and a dead toddler lay inside an ambulance.
Inside the school, classrooms were in ruins. People were seen searching for victims under the rubble and some were gathering remains of those who were killed.
The Gaza Health Ministry and the Hamas-run government media office said more than 100 others were wounded in the airstrikes, Reuters reported.
Anas Zeyad Fteha/Anadolu via Getty Images
Deir al-Balah’s Al Aqsa hospital confirmed the count to the Associated Press and CBS journalists saw the bodies.
The Israeli ministry said in a statement that it took “numerous steps” to mitigate the risk of harming civilians before the strike, “including the use of appropriate munitions, aerial surveillance and additional intelligence.”
“This is a further example of the Hamas terrorist organization’s systematic violation of international law and exploitation of civilian structures and population as human shields for its attacks against the State of Israel,” the statement said.
Anas Zeyad Fteha/Anadolu via Getty Images
Earlier Saturday, Israel’s military ordered the evacuation of a part of a designated humanitarian zone in Gaza ahead of a planned strike on Khan Younis.
The evacuation order was in response to rocket fire that Israel said originated from the area. The military said it planned an operation against Hamas militants in the city, including parts of Muwasi, the crowded tent camp in an area where Israel has told thousands of Palestinians to seek refuge throughout the war.
The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said at least 53 were killed and 189 injured during the strikes in Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis.
A spokesperson for Mahmoud Abbas, the president of Palestine, condemned the airstrikes and the United States for its “full support of the bloody massacres committed against the Palestinian people.”
“The green light that (Israeli President Benjamin) Netanyahu received from the American administration made him continue his onslaught and ongoing massacres against the Palestinian people, the latest which claimed the lives of dozens of people as a result of the occupation army targeting a school sheltering thousands of displaced people in the city of Deir al-Balah,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh said in a statement. “Every time the occupation bombs a school that shelters displaced persons, we see only some condemnations and denunciations that will not force the occupation to stop its bloody aggression.”
Netanyahu, during a trip to the U.S. this week, met with President Biden, gave an address before Congress and met with former President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
After their meeting, the White House said in a statement that Mr. Biden had expressed to Netanyahu “the need to close the remaining gaps, finalize the deal as soon as possible, bring the hostages home, and reach a durable end to the war in Gaza.”
The planned strike comes a day before officials from the U.S., Egypt, Qatar and Israel are scheduled to meet in Italy to discuss the ongoing hostage and cease-fire negotiations. CIA Director Bill Burns is expected to meet Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Abdul Rahman al-Thani, Mossad director David Barnea and Egyptian spy chief Abbas Kamel on Sunday, according to officials from the U.S. and Egypt who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to discuss the plans.
It’s the second evacuation order issued in a week that has included striking part of the humanitarian zone, a 60-square-kilometer (roughly 20-square-mile) blanketed with tent camps that lack sanitation and medical facilities and have limited access to aid, United Nations and humanitarian groups say. Israel expanded the zone in May to take in people fleeing Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population at the time had crowded.
According to Israeli estimates, about 1.8 million Palestinians are currently sheltering there after being uprooted multiple times in search of safety during Israel’s punishing air and ground campaign. In November, the military said the area could still be struck and that it was “not a safe zone, but it is a safer place than any other” in Gaza.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said it was increasingly difficult to know how many people would be affected by the evacuation order because those sheltering under there were constantly being displaced.
“Referring to the orders as evacuation orders don’t do any justice to what this means,” said Juliette Touma, the agency’s director of communications. “These are forced displacement orders. What happens is when people have these orders, they have very little time to move.”
Further north, Palestinians mourned the deaths of seven killed by Israeli airstrikes overnight on Zawaida, in central Gaza. Members of two families — parents and their two children as well as a mother and her two children — were wrapped in traditional Islamic white burial shrouds as community members gathered to perform funeral rights. As men lined up to pray in front of the bodies, weeping friends and neighbors approached individually to pay their final respects.
The war in Gaza has killed more than 39,250 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The U.N. estimated in February that some 17,000 children in the territory are now unaccompanied, and the number is likely to have grown since.
The war began with an assault by Hamas militants on southern Israel on Oct. 7 that killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostages. About 115 are still in Gaza, about a third of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.
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Oklahoma attorney general says state schools superintendent cannot mandate students watch prayer video
The Oklahoma attorney general’s office responded after the state’s education superintendent sent an email this week to public school administrators requiring them to show students his video announcement of a new Department of Religious Freedom and Patriotism. In the video, he prays for President-elect Trump.
Ryan Walters, a Republican, announced the new office on Wednesday and on Thursday sent the email to school superintendents statewide. The new department will be within the state’s Department of Education. Walters said it would “oversee the investigation of abuses to individual religious freedom or displays of patriotism.”
“In one of the first steps of the newly created department, we are requiring all of Oklahoma schools to play the attached video to all kids that are enrolled,” according to the email. Districts were also told to send the video to all parents of students.
In the video, Walters says religious liberty has been attacked and patriotism mocked “by woke teachers unions,” then prays for the leaders of the United States after saying students do not have to join in the prayer.
Sue Ogrocki / AP
“In particular, I pray for President Donald Trump and his team as they continue to bring about change to the country,” Walters said.
The office of state Attorney General Gentner Drummond issued a statement Friday saying Walters has no authority under state law to issue such a mandate.
“Not only is this edict unenforceable, it is contrary to parents’ rights, local control and individual free-exercise rights,” said the attorney general’s office spokesperson Phil Bacharach.
Multiple school districts have also said they had no plans to show students the video.
Walters, a former public school teacher elected in 2022, ran on a platform of fighting “woke ideology,” banning books from school libraries and getting rid of “radical leftists” who he claims are indoctrinating children in classrooms. He already faces two lawsuits over his June mandate that schools incorporate the Bible into lesson plans for students in grades 5 through 12. Several school districts have previously stated that they will disregard the mandate.
One of the lawsuits also notes that the initial request for proposal released by the State Department of Education to purchase the Bibles appears to have been tailored to match Bibles endorsed by now President-elect Donald Trump that sell for $59.99 each.
Earlier this week, Walters announced he had purchased more than 500 Bibles to be used in Advanced Placement government classes. The education department that the 500 Bibles are “God Bless the USA Bibles” and were ordered Thursday for about $25,000. They will arrive “in the coming weeks,” the department said.
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Kamala Harris raised more than $1 billion for her campaign. She’s still sending persistent appeals to donors after defeat.
Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party’s prodigious fundraising operation raised more than $1 billion in her loss to Donald Trump, but the vice president is still pushing donors for more money after the election.
Democrats are sending persistent appeals to Harris supporters without expressly asking them to cover any potential debts, enticing would-be donors instead with other matters: the Republican president-elect’s picks for his upcoming administration and a handful of pending congressional contests where ballots are still being tallied.
“The Harris campaign certainly spent more than they raised and is now busy trying to fundraise,” said Adrian Hemond, a Democratic strategist from Michigan. He said he had been asked by the campaign after its loss to Trump to help with fundraising.
The party is flooding Harris’ lucrative email donor list with near-daily appeals aimed at small-dollar donors — those whose contributions are measured in the hundreds of dollars or less. But Hemond said the postelection effort also includes individual calls to larger donors.
One person familiar with the effort and the Democratic National Committee’s finances said the Harris campaign’s expected shortfall is a relatively small sum compared to the breadth of the campaign, which reported having $119 million cash on hand in mid-October before the Nov. 5 election. That person was not authorized to publicly discuss the campaign’s finances and spoke on condition of anonymity.
But the scramble now underscores the expense involved in a losing effort and the immediate challenges facing Democrats as they try to maintain a baseline political operation to counter the Trump administration and prepare for the 2026 midterm elections. It also calls into question how Democrats used their resources, including hosting events with musicians and other celebrities as well as running ads in a variety of nontraditional spaces such as Las Vegas’ domed Sphere.
Patrick Stauffer, chief financial officer for the Harris campaign, said in a statement that “there were no outstanding debts or bills overdue” on Election Day and there “will be no debt” listed for either the campaign or the DNC on their next financial disclosures, which are due to the Federal Election Commission in December.
The person familiar with the campaign and DNC’s finances said it was impossible to know just where Harris’ balance sheet stands currently. The campaign still is getting invoices from vendors for events and other services from near the end of the race. The campaign also has outstanding receipts; for example, from media organizations that must pay for their employees’ spots on Air Force Two as it traveled for the vice president’s campaign activities.
Within hours of Trump picking Florida Republican Matt Gaetz for attorney general on Wednesday, Harris’ supporters got an appeal for more money for “the Harris Fight Fund,” citing the emerging Trump team and its agenda.
Gaetz, who resigned his House seat after the announcement, “will weaponize the Justice Department to protect themselves,” the email said. It said Democrats “must stop them from executing Trump’s plans for revenge and retribution” and noted that “even his Republican allies are shocked by this” Cabinet choice.
Another appeal followed Friday in Harris’ name.
“The light of America’s promise will burn bright as long as we keep fighting,” the email said, adding that “there are still a number of critical races across the country that are either too close to call or with the margin of recounts or certain legal challenges.”
The emails do not mention Harris’ campaign or its finances.
The “Harris Fight Fund” is a postelection label for the “Harris Victory Fund,” which is the joint fundraising operation of Harris’ campaign, the DNC and state Democratic parties. Despite the language in the recent appeals, most rank-and-file donors’ contributions would be routed to the national party, unless a donor took the time to contact DNC directly and have the money go directly to Harris or a state party.
The fine print at the bottom of the solicitation explains that the first $41,300 from a person and first $15,000 from a political action committee would be allocated to the DNC. The next $3,300 from a person or $5,000 from a PAC would go to the Harris for President “Recount Account.” Anything beyond that threshold, up to maximum contribution limits that can reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, would be spread across state parties.
Officials at the DNC, which is set to undergo a leadership change early next year, indicated the party has no plans to cover any shortfall for Harris but could not explicitly rule out the party shifting any money to the campaign.
