An Israeli airstrike on a United Nations school packed with hundreds of displaced people in central Gaza killed at least 27 people, local officials said.
The Israeli military said it carried out an attack on a United Nations school that houses a “Hamas compound.”
Local journalists told the BBC that an Israeli warplane fired two missiles at a classroom on the top floor of a school in the Nuserat refugee camp.
Hamas’s media office accused Israel of committing “horrific massacres”.
Ambulances and rescue teams are taking the injured and dead to nearby hospitals.
Videos on social media showed destroyed classrooms and bodies wrapped in shrouds in a morgue.
“Enough of the war! We have been displaced dozens of times. They kill our children while they sleep,” a woman injured in the attack screamed in a video.
Ismail Tawabta, director of the Hamas media office, dismissed Israeli claims that a Hamas command post was hidden at the United Nations school.
“The occupying forces used … concocted false stories to justify their brutal crimes against dozens of displaced people,” he told Reuters.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that warplanes “carried out precision strikes on a Hamas compound inside an UNRWA school in the Nuserat area”.
The group said it had killed Hamas and Islamic Jihad “terrorists” who took part in an attack in southern Israel on October 7, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.
Since then, at least 36,580 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
The Israel Defense Forces said it had taken steps to “reduce the risk of harming uninvolved civilians” before the airstrikes.
Earlier, the Israeli military said it had placed “operational control” in the eastern part of the Burij refugee camp and the town of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, where dozens of Palestinians were reportedly killed.
Residents reported heavy bombardment, and charity Medecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said at least 70 bodies, mostly women and children, had been brought to local hospitals since Tuesday.
Médecins Sans Frontières said its on-site medical team described the situation at Deir el-Balah Al-Aqsa Hospital, one of the last fully functioning health facilities in central Gaza, as “apocalyptic”.
