Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says 16 killed in strike on UN school

The Hamas government in Gaza said an Israeli strike on Saturday on a UN-run school where thousands of displaced were sheltering killed 16 people.

The Israeli military said its aircraft targeted “terrorists” operating around the Al-Jawni school in Nuseirat, central Gaza.

The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, which condemned the strike as an “odious massacre”, said 50 injured were taken to hospital from the school.

Some 7,000 people were sheltering in the school at the time of the attack, the Hamas government press office said. Dozens of people scrambled through the rubble after the strike to find survivors.

The press office said the school was run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, and most of the casualties were “children, women, and elderly”.

The Israeli military said it “struck several terrorists operating in structures located in the area of UNRWA’s Al-Jawni school”.

“This location served as a hideout and operational infrastructure from which attacks against IDF troops operating in the Gaza Strip were directed and carried out,” it added, insisting that “steps were taken in order to mitigate the risk of harming civilians”.

Earlier, UNRWA said two of its workers were killed in a strike at Al-Bureij, also in central Gaza. The agency has a major food warehouse in the district.

Paramedics said 10 people, including three journalists, died in a strike on a house in Nuseirat.

“Absolutely no place in the Gaza Strip is safe,” said civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal.

The war began with Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

The Hamas also seized hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza including 42 the military says are dead.

In response, Israel has carried out a military offensive that has killed at least 38,098 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data from the Gaza health ministry.