Agence France-PresseMore than 50 people were killed in Israeli air and ground attacks across the Gaza Strip on Sunday, according to local medics and rescue workers.
They added that among the dead were children, a photographer working for Al Jazeera, and civil defense workers.
The Israeli army said it targeted sites used by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement allied with it.
The Hamas-run Health Ministry said the deaths meant the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza during the 14-month war between Israel and Hamas had exceeded 45,000.
The ministry does not differentiate between combatants and civilians, but it reported in October that 29,980 children, women, and the elderly were among the identified dead.
These figures are often disputed by the Israeli government, which says that nearly 20,000 “terrorists” were killed, but these figures are widely accepted by UN agencies.
The war began when Hamas-led militants carried out an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, during which approximately 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.
Many of those killed on Sunday were at a UN-run school used as a shelter for displaced families in the southern city of Khan Yunis.
Horrific footage showed a bloody scene on the third floor of Ahmed bin Abdulaziz School, and it appeared that the bodies of children had been recovered.
Manal Tafesh, whose brother and children were among those killed, told Reuters news agency outside a local center: “People were safe. They stayed in their homes after they prayed the evening prayer. They were sitting, sleeping and spending the night in their places.” Morgue.
Medics said that at least 13 people were killed, while a spokeswoman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said that she had heard reports of about 20 deaths, many of them women and children.
“It doesn't stop,” Louise Wattridge told the BBC from central Gaza. “The pain and suffering we are still experiencing is unrelenting.”
The IDF said it “launched a precise strike on Hamas terrorists who were operating inside the command and control center” located inside the school.
It also accused Hamas and other armed groups of exploiting civilians and using civilian infrastructure as human shields.
Medics said several other people were killed at another school turned shelter in the northern town of Beit Hanoun, which the United Nations said has been under siege by Israeli forces for more than two months.
The United Nations said it was monitoring reports that more than 1,500 people were newly displaced after Israeli forces besieged and bombed the Khalil Aweida School.
The Israeli army said on Sunday that its forces “carried out a targeted raid on a terrorist gathering point in the Beit Hanoun area.”
He added, “In cooperation with the Israeli Air Force, the forces bombed dozens of terrorists by air and land, and other terrorists were arrested.”
ReutersAnother raid hit a civil defense building in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Basal said that the raid killed the directors of the Nuseirat and Sheikh Radwan centers and two volunteers, one of whom was named Ahmed Bakr Al-Louh. He added that five other people were injured, three of them in serious condition.
He added, “The Israeli occupation has shown the world once again that there is no protection for humanitarian workers in Gaza and no commitment to international humanitarian laws,” adding that 94 civil defense workers have been killed since the beginning of the war.
Ahmed Al-Louh was a photographer for the Qatar-based Al Jazeera network, and he strongly condemned what it called the “targeted killing” carried out by Israel of its journalists.
She added that Louh was covering a rescue operation carried out by the Civil Defense following a previous raid on Sunday, and that it came “just days after his home was targeted.”
The network said in a statement: “The network calls on all human rights and media institutions to condemn the systematic killings carried out by the Israeli occupation against journalists in cold blood, evade its responsibilities under international humanitarian law, and bring the perpetrators of this heinous crime to justice.”
The IDF said the Civil Defense building was used by “terrorists to plan and carry out an imminent terrorist attack against IDF forces.”
It claimed that “among the terrorists eliminated in the strike was Islamic Jihad terrorist Ahmed Bakr Al-Louh, who previously held the position of platoon commander in the Central Camps Brigade of the Islamic Jihad Movement,” without providing any evidence.
Al Jazeera did not comment on the Israeli claim, however Mahmoud, Louh's cousin, told the Associated Press“We were astonished by the Israeli occupation’s statement.”
He added, “These allegations are false and misleading to cover up this crime.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists says that at least 137 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Israel and Lebanon since the start of the war.
