More than 35 people were killed in an Israeli strike that hit a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in central Gaza early on Thursday, local health officials have said.
Witnesses and hospital officials said the pre-dawn strike hit the school in Nuseirat, which is run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA). The school was housing Palestinians who had fled Israeli offensives and bombings in northern Gaza, they said.
UNRWA communications director Juliette Touma told the Reuters news agency that the number of people reported killed in the Israeli offensive on the Nuseirat school was between 35 and 45, but added that this figure could not yet be confirmed.
The Israeli military said Hamas militants were operating from inside the school, and added that it had “eliminated” several militants in a “precise strike on a Hamas compound embedded inside an UNRWA school in the area of Nuseirat.”
The strike came after the military announced a new ground and air assault on several refugee camps in central Gaza in pursuit of Hamas militants it says have regrouped there.
Thursday’s strike is the latest instance of troops pushing back into parts of Gaza where they had previously conducted operations, underscoring the difficulty Israel faces in rooting out the militant group which has been designated a terror organization by the US, Israel and Germany, among other governments.
