At least 16 people were killed in an Israeli strike on a school housing displaced Palestinian families in central Gaza on Saturday, the Palestinian health ministry said, in an attack Israel said targeted militants.
The health ministry said the attack on the school in Al-Nuseirat killed at least 16 people and injured more than 50.
The Israeli military said it took precautions to minimize the risk to civilians before targeting the gunmen who were using the area as a hideout to plan and carry out attacks on soldiers. Hamas denied its fighters were there.
At the scene, Ayman al-Atouneh said he saw children among the dead. “We came here running to see the targeted area, we saw bodies of children, in pieces, this is a playground, there was a trampoline here, there were swings and vendors,” he said.
Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for Gaza’s Civilian Emergency Service, said in a statement that the death toll could rise because many of the wounded were in critical condition.
The attack meant no place in the enclave was safe for families fleeing their homes to seek shelter, he said.
Al-Nuseirat, one of the eight historic refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, was the site of intensified Israeli shelling on Saturday. An airstrike earlier on a house in the camp killed at least 10 people and wounded many others, according to doctors.
In its daily update of people killed in Gaza’s nearly nine-month war, Gaza’s health ministry said Israeli military raids across the enclave had killed at least 29 Palestinians in the past 24 hours and wounded 100 others.
Among those killed in separate airstrikes on Saturday were five local journalists, raising the number of journalists killed since Oct. 7 to 158, according to the Hamas-led Gaza government media office.
Gaza health authorities say more than 38,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive. The health ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, but officials say most of the dead are civilians.
Israel has lost 323 soldiers in Gaza and says at least a third of the Palestinian dead are fighters.
Israel launched its offensive, aimed at eliminating the militant Islamist group Hamas, in response to a Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 that killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli estimates.
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Israeli forces, which have deepened their incursions into Rafah, in the southern enclave near the border with Egypt, killed four Palestinian policemen and wounded eight others in an airstrike on their vehicle on Saturday, health officials said.
A statement issued by the Hamas-run interior ministry said the four included Fares Abdel-Al, the head of the police force in Tel Al-Sultan’s western Rafah district.
The Israeli military said the forces continued “intelligence base operations” in Rafah, destroyed several underground structures, seized weapons and equipment and killed several Palestinian militants.
Israel has said its operations in Rafah are aimed at eliminating the last battalions of Hamas’ armed wings.
The Israeli military said it had eliminated Hamas rockets in Deir Al-Ballah in central Gaza that were operating through territory designated by humanitarian groups. He said he carried out an accurate strike after taking steps to ensure civilians were not injured.
The armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad said militants attacked Israeli forces in several areas of Gaza with anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs.
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