Airstrike on Gaza school kills at least 16 people

At least 16 people have been killed in an Israeli air strike on a school in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian officials say.

Dozens of others were wounded in the attack on a building housing thousands of displaced people in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.

Video from the scene showed adults and children screaming in the dusty and rubble-filled streets as they rushed to help the injured.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it struck a number of “terrorists operating in structures located in the Al-Jaouni School area”.

Witnesses told the BBC the attack targeted the upper floors of the school, which is located near a busy market.

The BBC said up to 7,000 people had used the building as a shelter.

A local source said the target was a room believed to be used by Hamas police. The BBC was unable to verify this claim.

In a statement posted to X – formerly known as Twitter – the IDF confirmed it had struck the school buildings, saying it had taken “numerous steps” to “minimize the risk of harm to civilians, including the use of precise aerial surveillance and additional intelligence”.

Hamas militants used the site as a “hideout” to carry out attacks against IDF troops, the report said.

“Hamas continues to systematically violate international law by using civilian structures and civilians as human shields for terrorist attacks against the State of Israel,” the report added.

Many schools and other UN facilities have been used as shelters by the 1.7 million people displaced by the nearly eight-month-long war.

A previous attack in June on another crowded UN-run school in Nuseirat killed at least 35 people.

Local journalists told the BBC at the time that a fighter jet fired two missiles into classrooms on the top floor of the school.

Following that attack, the Israeli military said it had “conducted a precision strike on a Hamas compound” at the school and killed many of the 20 to 30 militants it believed were inside.

The Hamas-run government media office in Gaza denied the allegation and accused Israel of carrying out a “horrific massacre”.

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), which runs the school, described the incident in June as “horrific” and said claims that armed groups may have been inside the shelter were “shocking” but could not be confirmed.

Israel’s war erupted after an unprecedented Hamas offensive on Israel on October 7, in which Hamas-led gunmen killed some 1,200 people and took 251 others back to Gaza as hostages.

At least 38,098 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.