Israeli strike on UN school kills dozens in latest "horrific massacre" in Gaza
Gaza City, Gaza - In scenes described as "apocalyptic," a hospital in central Gaza said Thursday at least 37 people were killed in an overnight Israeli bombardment of a UN-run school.
The deadly strike came as US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators have resumed talks aimed at securing a truce and hostage release deal in the nearly eight-month war waged by Israel in response to the October 7 attack led by Hamas.
Israel's military said it had "eliminated" several militants in a "precise strike on a Hamas compound embedded inside an UNRWA school in the area of Nuseirat," without offering any evidence for its claims.
Israel regularly accuses Hamas and its allies in Gaza of using schools, hospitals, and other civilian infrastructure – including facilities run by UN agencies – as operational centers, but has failed to produce substantial proof.
Multiple reports have also revealed that Israeli forces knowingly launch attacks on targets recommended by algorithms, even when the legitimacy of those targets is questionable and striking them results in the killing of dozens, sometimes hundreds of civilians.
Israel accused of latest "horrific massacre"
Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah, near the Nuseirat refugee camp, said it had received the bodies of at least "37 martyrs" from the strike, updating an initial death toll of 27 provided by the Hamas government media office which condemned it as a "horrific massacre... that shames humanity."
Gaza's health ministry later updated the total death toll to at least 40, including 14 children.
An AFP photographer saw Palestinians removing blood-stained mattresses and inspecting the damage to the school where displaced Gazans were sheltering, parts of it now littered with broken concrete slabs.
A medic at Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital said another Israeli pre-dawn strike killed six people in a house in Nuseirat refugee camp, while witnesses reported intense artillery shelling in Bureij and Al-Maghazi camps in the same area.
Warplanes also carried out strikes in eastern and central neighborhoods of Rafah, a local source told AFP.
Israel's latest escalation in violence comes in spite of a ceasefire proposal touted by US President Joe Biden last week. Despite presenting it as an Israeli plan, the noises coming out of Tel Aviv have been ambiguous, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right members of his government insisting that there can be no agreement without the "total destruction" of Hamas.
Meanwhile, Israel's relentless, eight-month war has led to widespread accusations of war crimes and genocide.
More than 36,000 Palestinians have been killed so far, tens of thousands more are missing or injured, and Gaza faces widespread famine as the entry of aid continues to be blocked.
Cover photo: Bashar TALEB / AFP