TEL AVIV, Israel
An Israeli air strike on a UN school packed with hundreds of displaced people in central Gaza has killed at least 27 people, local officials say.
The Israeli military said it
carried out a strike on a UN school that housed a "Hamas compound".
Local journalists said that an
Israeli warplane fired two missiles at classrooms on the top floor of the
school in the Nuseirat refugee camp.
The Hamas media office has
accused Israel of committing a "horrific massacre".
Ambulances and rescue teams
have been rushing the wounded and dead to a nearby hospital.
Footage on social media showed
destroyed classrooms and bodies wrapped in shrouds at a morgue.
"Enough war! We have been
displaced dozens of times. They killed our children while they were
sleeping," a woman injured in the attack screamed in one video.
Ismail al-Thawabta, director
of the Hamas media office, rejected Israel's claims that the UN school had
hidden a Hamas command post.
"The occupation uses ...
false fabricated stories to justify the brutal crime it conducted against
dozens of displaced people," he told Reuters news agency.
In a statement, the Israel
Defense Forces (IDF) said jets had conducted a "precise strike on a Hamas
compound embedded inside an Unrwa school in the area of Nuseirat".
It said it had killed Hamas
and Islamic Jihad "terrorists" who took part in the 7 October attack
on southern Israel, when around 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were
taken hostage.
At least 36,580 people have
been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health
ministry.
The IDF said it had taken
steps before the air strike to "reduce the risk of harming uninvolved
civilians".
Earlier, the Israeli military said it had taken “operational control” over eastern areas of Bureij refugee camp and the town of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, as dozens of Palestinians were reported killed.
Residents reported intense
bombardment and the charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said at least 70
bodies - the majority women and children - had been brought to a local hospital
since Tuesday.
MSF said its medical team on
the ground had described the situation at Deir al-Balah's al-Aqsa hospital -
one of the only remaining functional health facilities in central Gaza - as
"apocalyptic".
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