The Fahmi al-Jarjawi School massacre in Gaza is a reminder of the cost of Israel’s impunity
The aftermath of the Israeli airstrike on Fahmi al-Jarjawi school in Gaza City, May 2025
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reports on 26 May 2025:
Israeli forces continue to carry out horrific massacres by bombing shelters, levelling remaining buildings, and imposing unliveable conditions on the Gaza Strip’s population. Yesterday’s attack targeted a school sheltering displaced persons in the Al-Daraj neighbourhood of central Gaza City, killing at least 30 civilians, more than half of them women and children. Following the attack, most of the bodies were completely charred.
Euro-Med Monitor’s preliminary findings indicate that Israeli aircraft launched three airstrikes on the Fahmi al-Jarjawi School, located near al-Sahaba Street in the Al-Daraj neighbourhood of Gaza City. Hundreds of internally displaced families from the northern Gaza Strip and Gaza City were sheltering in the school at the time of the attack. The airstrikes triggered massive fires in classrooms, trapping families inside. The attack killed 31 people, including 18 children and six women, most of whom were found completely charred. Several others were injured, and some remain missing.
In a statement to Euro-Med Monitor, Mohammed al-Masry, a survivor of the attack, said: “At around one a.m., occupation aircraft bombed the school with at least three destructive and incendiary bombs. Fires immediately broke out in the first-floor classrooms, and the displaced people were trapped inside after the doors were jammed shut due to the bombing.” He added, “My relatives were inside the classroom, screaming for help, and I couldn’t do anything. When civil defence teams arrived, there were charred bodies and body parts everywhere. We’ve been collecting body parts since dawn, and there are still people trapped under the rubble.”
Alaa Odeh, a displaced person who was injured in the attack, said: “The school was very crowded with displaced people, especially children and widows, due to the mass displacement from northern Gaza and Shuja’iyya.” Continued Odeh, “We were following the news about the ceasefire negotiations that night when, suddenly and without warning, the ground floor was bombed and completely burned. I found myself trapped under the rubble, with fires raging around me and people screaming above.”
The targeting of schools sheltering displaced persons, especially women and children, is not an isolated incident, but part of a deliberate, recurring Israeli policy that represents one of many facets of the ongoing genocide against Palestinians over the past 19 months.
Israel’s bombing of Fahmi al-Jarjawi School is part of a systematic pattern of calculated attacks on shelters, in general, reflecting a clear intent to eliminate any form of protection and deny civilians the most basic means of safety. It is a component of a broader campaign aimed at targeting the very existence of the Palestinian people.
On the same night as the Fahmi al-Jarjawi School bombing, Euro-Med Monitor documented Israeli airstrikes targeting the home of Osama Abd Rabbo in Jabalia al-Nazla, northern Gaza. These strikes killed 20 Palestinians, including Abd Rabbo and his entire family.
Israel is intensifying its killing campaign as part of a broader escalation of the genocide, implementing a scorched-earth policy and systematically destroying what remains of the Gaza Strip’s neighbourhoods and infrastructure. For over 19 months now, Israel’s approach has been marked by mass killing, starvation, and the deliberate dismantling of the means of life, with the aim of annihilating Palestinian society in the Strip and eliminating any prospect of Gazans’ return to what remains of their homes or reconstruction.
Urgent measures are needed to ensure special protection of shelters, establish safe humanitarian corridors for aid delivery, and evacuate the wounded. The international community must act immediately to stop Israeli attacks and end the political and military impunity that enables Israel to continue its crimes without any accountability.
All states, both individually and collectively, must fulfil their legal responsibilities by taking urgent action to stop the genocide in the Gaza Strip, through implementing effective measures to protect Palestinian civilians; ensuring Israel’s compliance with international law and the decisions of the International Court of Justice; preventing the implementation of the US-Israeli forced displacement plan; and holding Israel and its more powerful allies accountable for all crimes against the Palestinians in the Strip. The International Criminal Court must implement the arrest warrants for the Israeli Prime Minister and Minister of Defence at the earliest opportunity, in accordance with the principle that there is no immunity for international crimes.
The international community must also impose economic, diplomatic, and military sanctions on Israel and its allies, particularly the United States, for such grave violations of international law. These sanctions should include arms embargoes; a ban on the export and import of parts, software, and dual-use goods; an end to all political, financial, and military support; freezing the assets of officials involved in crimes against Palestinians and imposing travel bans on these officials; suspending the operations of Israeli and US military and security companies in international markets and freezing their assets; and suspending trade privileges and bilateral agreements that provide Israel and the US with economic benefits that enable their continued crimes against the Palestinian people.
Countries with universal jurisdiction courts must issue arrest warrants for any Israeli or Western political and military leaders involved in the ongoing genocide and initiate legal proceedings, even with the accused in absentia, to fulfil their international legal obligation to prosecute serious crimes and combat impunity.
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