‘Children torn apart’: Israel strike rains hell on Gaza dawn prayers

White body bags littered the floor and mourning filled the air after a school housing displaced Palestinians was struck with Israeli missiles Saturday — a horrific and increasingly common sight in the Gaza war.

Dawn prayers were shattered by the early morning triple air strike from Israeli warplanes, which gutted Al-Tabieen religious school and mosque in Gaza City.

In the hellish aftermath, body parts were strewn around the rubble and charred, bloodied bodies slumped in the wreckage of the two-storey complex.

Grim-faced volunteers piled corpses in blood-stained blankets into an ambulance, as seriously wounded men lay groaning on the ground.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said at least 93 people were killed, 17 of them women and children, making it one of the war’s deadliest strikes.

Such incidents have become a pattern in recent weeks. According to an AFP tally, at least 14 schools sheltering Gaza’s displaced have been hit since July 6, killing more than 280 people.

“Peaceful people — women, children, and youths — were performing the Fajr prayer as usual when suddenly a missile hit them,” said Abu Wassim, who lives nearby and came to survey the scene.

“They were reduced to remains. Children were torn apart, and women were burned. What can we say or do? What is in our power?”

– ‘They were just praying’ –

As the sun climbed and mourners gathered, one man stroked the face of a dead child shrouded in a plastic body bag.

“They dropped a missile on them while they were just praying. Fear God, people! Fear God, Arabs!” a woman wailed over the body.

Another man looked lost as he held a small corpse wrapped in a blanket. Nearby, six body bags lay on the ground, three of them children. Tattered Korans were piled on a window ledge.

“We woke up before dawn to the sound of a strike,” said Sakr, a resident from the neighbourhood who gave just one name.