Gaza’s civil defence agency said at least 31 people were killed on Thursday in an Israeli air strike on a school serving as a shelter for people displaced by the war.
Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP the death toll had risen to 31, with more than 100 others wounded in the strike on Dar Al Arqam School in the Al Tuffah neighbourhood, northeast of Gaza City.
Hamas condemned the attack, accusing the Israeli government of continuing its “targeting of innocent civilians as part of the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip.”
Overnight strikes by Israel killed at least 55 people in the Gaza Strip, hospital officials said Thursday, a day after senior government officials said Israel said it would seize large parts of the Palestinian territory and establish a new security corridor across it.
The strikes backed up vows by Israeli officials to intensify the war until Hamas returns dozens of remaining hostages and agrees to leave the territory. Israel has imposed a month-long halt on all imports of food, fuel and humanitarian aid that has left civilians facing acute shortages as supplies dwindle.
Officials in Khan Younis, in the southern part of the strip, said the bodies of 14 people had been taken to Nasser Hospital – nine of them from the same family. The dead included five children and four women.
The bodies of another 19 people, including five children aged between 1 and 7 years and a pregnant woman, were taken to the European hospital near Khan Younis, hospital officials said.
In Gaza City, 21 bodies were taken to Ahli Hospital, including those of seven children.
The attacks came as the Israeli military promised an independent investigation of a March 23 operation in which its forces opened fire on ambulances in Gaza. UN officials say 15 Palestinian medics and emergency responders were killed in the attack.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Thursday that 1,163 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory since Israel resumed large-scale strikes on March 18, bringing the overall death toll since the war began to 50,523.
Agencies
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