An unknown organization named "The Martyrs of Beit el-Makdas" took credit for the attack on the American School in Gaza City Wednesday night. Their spokesman said the school was "the last remaining symbol of the U.S. and its allies in Gaza."
According to the Bethlehem-based Ma'an news agency, three gunmen fired a rocket-propelled grenade in the art hall on the second floor of the school. The school's principal said that the gunmen broke into the school, told the school's guards to leave and then fired an RPG from zero range destroying the hall's contents.
The principal said: "The school's staff and students are all Palestinians, and it is licensed by the Ministry of Education. Its mission is purely educational with nothing to do with politics." He said that the school had been targeted in the past and that an American visitor to the school had been kidnapped about a year ago.
"Beit el-Makdas" is an ancient Arab name for Jerusalem. It is taken directly from the Hebrew "Beit HaMikdash" - the Temple.