About 100 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school complex in Gaza where displaced families are located, the government in Gaza led by Hamas announced today, Reuters reports.
The Israeli military said the attack targeted Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants operating there.
Reuters reports that video from the scene shows body parts scattered on the ground and multiple bodies being carried and covered with blankets.
Empty food cans lay in a pool of blood and burned mattresses and a child's doll was among the debris.
The Hamas-run media office said in a statement that the strikes occurred when people sheltering in a school were performing dawn prayers, leading to many casualties.
"There are more than 93 martyrs so far, including 11 children and six women. There are unidentified remains," Palestinian Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Basal said at a televised news conference.
About 6.000 people took shelter in that complex, he said.
The Gaza Health Ministry has so far not released details on the casualties.
In a statement in Hebrew, the Israeli military said the death toll was "inflated".
About 20 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants are said to be operating at the site.
"The facility and the mosque that was destroyed in it served as an active military facility of Hamas and Islamic Jihad," Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said on the social network X.
"According to an initial audit, the figures released by Hamas's government information office in Gaza do not match the information held by the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), precision munitions were used and the attack was accurate," Shoshani said.
Israel says Palestinian militant groups are embedding themselves among civilians in Gaza, operating out of schools, hospitals and designated humanitarian zones - which Hamas and its allies deny.
Hamas said the attack was a heinous crime and a serious escalation.
Izat El-Reshik, a member of Hamas' political office, said in a statement that there was not "one fighter" among the dead.
Egypt said today that Israel's "deliberate killing" of unarmed Palestinians shows it lacks the political will to end the war in Gaza, Reuters reports.
The announcement by Egypt's foreign ministry came after more than 100 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded in an Israeli attack on a Gaza school housing displaced people, according to the official Palestinian news agency.
The Israeli military said it hit a Hamas command center.
The civil defense of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said today that between 90 and 100 people were killed in an Israeli bombardment of a school in Gaza City, while Israel's military said it targeted "terrorists" operating in the "command center" of the Palestinian Islamist movement.
"The number is now 90 to 100 dead, and there are dozens more injured," Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Basal said, adding that the al-Tabin school, which he said housed "displaced Palestinians," was the target of three attacks.
The Israeli army, for its part, stated that it "accurately hit Hamas terrorists who were operating in the integrated command and control center of Hamas" in that school, which is located next to the mosque in the neighborhood of Daraj Tufa, which serves as a shelter for the residents of Gaza.
The command and control center served as a "shelter for terrorists and Hamas commanders", from which various attacks on the Israeli army were planned and prepared, according to the statement.
Al-Tabin School is one of the shelters in central Gaza City, which houses about 250 displaced persons, more than half of whom are children and women, according to media sources from the Hamas government, which rules the Gaza Strip.
(Beta)
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