An Israeli airstrike on a United Nations school with hundreds of displaced people in central Gaza killed more than 20 people, locals said.
The Israeli army said it carried out an attack on a United Nations school that was home to a “Hamas compound”.
Local journalists told the BBC that an Israeli warplane fired two missiles into classrooms on the top floor of the school in the Nuseirat refugee camp.
The Hamas media office said at least 27 people were killed and accused Israel of carrying out a “horrifying massacre”.
Ambulances and rescue teams took the injured and dead to nearby hospitals.
Footage on social media showed classrooms destroyed and corpses wrapped in shrouds at a morgue.
“Enough of the war! We have been displaced dozens of times. They killed our children while they were sleeping,” a woman injured in the attack shouted in a video.
Ismail al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas media office, denied Israel’s claim that the United Nations school had hidden a Hamas command post.
“The occupation force uses… false and fabricated stories to justify the brutal crimes it carried out against dozens of displaced people,” he told Reuters.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the jets carried out a “precision strike on a Hamas compound located inside a UNRWA school in the Nuseirat area”.
The IDF statement said it had “eliminated” the Hamas and Islamic Jihad “terrorists” who participated in the October 7 attack on southern Israel, which left about 1,200 people dead and 251 others injured. taken hostage.
According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, at least 36,580 people have been killed in Gaza since then.
The IDF said it had taken steps before the airstrike to “reduce the risk of harm to unrelated civilians”.
Earlier, the Israeli military said it had taken “operational control” over areas east of the Bureij refugee camp and the town of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, as dozens of Palestinians were said to be was killed.
On Wednesday morning, the military said troops supported by airstrikes had begun an operation against “terrorists and terrorist infrastructure on and below the ground.”
Residents reported intense bombing and charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said at least 70 dead people – the majority of whom were women and children – had been taken to local hospitals since Tuesday .
MSF said its medical team on the scene described the situation at al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah – one of the only remaining functional medical facilities in central Gaza – as ” doomsday”.
The charity said women and children made up the majority of the 70 dead and 300 injured taken to hospital in the past 24 hours and many patients suffered severe burns, shrapnel wounds, broken bones and other injuries.
“The smell of blood when I entered the emergency room [this morning] just overwhelming. Everyone is lying on the floor. People were lying around outside… the bodies were put in white plastic bags. The families stood by them and prayed,” Karin Huster, MSF medical specialist, said in an audio message.
“It was just such an emotional situation. No one could have coped.”
