At least 30 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike on a school sheltering people in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza on Saturday, Palestinian health officials said. The Israeli military said the strike targeted a Hamas command centre used to store weapons and plan attacks.
The Gaza Health Ministry and the Hamas-run government media office gave the toll for those killed in the strike on the school in Deir al-Balah, one of the areas most populated with displaced families, and said more than 100 others were wounded.
The Israeli military said in a statement it had targeted a “Hamas command and control centre inside the Khadija school compound in central Gaza.”
The statement said the school was being used to launch attacks against troops and as a weapons cache and that it warned civilians before the strike.
At Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, ambulances raced wounded Palestinians into the medical facility. Some of the wounded also arrived on foot, with their clothes stained with blood.
In previous such strikes that have hit civilian infrastructure, Israel’s military has blamed the Hamas militant group for putting civilians in harm’s way, accusing it of operating within densely populated neighbourhoods, schools and hospitals as cover. Hamas denies this.
Earlier on Saturday, Palestinian official media said that at least 14 Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks since dawn in the southern city of Khan Younis and that their bodies were brought to Nasser Medical Complex.
Evacuation order for parts of Khan Younis
The Israeli military told Palestinians to temporarily evacuate southern neighbourhoods of Khan Younis so it could “forcefully operate” there, telling them to relocate to a humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi, a military statement said.
The military said its calls to evacuate were communicated to the population via several mediums in order to mitigate danger to civilians.
In Bureij refugee camp, five Palestinians were killed earlier in an Israeli airstrike on a house, while four others were killed in another strike on a house in Rafah, near the border with Egypt, medics said.
The United Nations and humanitarian officials accuse Israel of using disproportionate force in the war and of failing to ensure civilians have safe places to go, a charge it denies.
On Friday the military said troops battled Palestinian fighters in Khan Younis, and destroyed tunnels and other infrastructure, as they sought to suppress small militant units that have continued to hit troops with mortar fire.
The fighting, more than nine months after the start of Israel’s invasion of Gaza following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack, underlined the difficulty the Israel Defence Forces has in eliminating fighters of the group.
More than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli strikes in the enclave, according to Gaza health authorities, who do not distinguish between fighters and non-combatants.
Israeli officials estimate that some 14,000 fighters from militant groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have been killed or taken prisoner, out of a force they estimated to number more than 25,000 at the start of the war.
About 1,200 people were killed and 250 were taken hostage in the Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, according to Israeli tallies.
An exhibition of more than 120 artists from Gaza at the Palestinian Museum near Ramallah has become a guardian for the region’s cultural heritage, threatened by war and destruction.