DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — An Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in the Gaza Strip killed at least 27 people on Thursday, Palestinian medical officials said.
The Israeli military said it targeted militants, but people sheltering there said the strike hit a meeting of aid workers.
Israel has continued to strike at what it says are militant targets across the Palestinian enclave even as attention has shifted to its war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and rising tensions with Iran. The military launched a large-scale air and ground operation against Hamas in northern Gaza earlier this week.
In a separate development, the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon said an Israeli tank fired on its headquarters in the town of Naqoura, hitting an observation tower and wounding two peacekeepers, who were hospitalised. The attack drew widespread condemnation and prompted the Italian Defense Ministry to summon Israel's ambassador in protest.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the incident.
The UN peacekeeping mission known as UNIFIL said in a statement that its headquarters and nearby positions "have been repeatedly hit." It said the Israeli army also fired on a nearby bunker where peacekeepers were sheltering, damaging vehicles and a communication system. It said an Israeli drone was seen flying to the bunker's entrance.
The reports came as the Israeli military continued to pound Hezbollah targets in Lebanon while the militant group kept up its rocket attacks, setting off air raid sirens in parts of northern Israel.
The Lebanese Health Ministry said an Israeli airstrike on Thursday killed at least four people and wounded 17 in Karak, a village in eastern Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. There was no immediate comment from Israel's military.
The strike in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah killed 27 people, including a child and seven women, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where the bodies were brought. It said several other people were wounded.
An Associated Press reporter saw ambulances streaming into the hospital and counted the bodies, many of which arrived in pieces.
The Israeli military said it carried out a precise strike targeting a militant command and control centre inside the school, without providing evidence. Israel has repeatedly attacked schools that were turned into shelters in Gaza, accusing militants of taking cover in them.
Witnesses said the strike occurred while school managers were meeting with representatives of an aid group in a room normally used by Hamas-run police who provide security. They said there were no police in the room at the time.
The Palestinian branch of Terre des Hommes, a Swiss aid group, said in a statement that members of one of its children's health teams were killed in the strike, though it did not specify how many.
"There were no militants. There was no Hamas," said Iftikhar Hamouda, who had fled from northern Gaza earlier in the war.
"We headed to tents. They bombed the tents ... In the streets, they bombed us. In the markets, they bombed us. In the schools, they bombed us," she said. "Where should we go?"
The Hamas-run government operated a civilian police force numbering in the tens of thousands. They largely vanished from the streets after the start of the war as Israel targeted them with airstrikes, but plainclothes Hamas security personnel still exert control over most areas.
Hamas has continued to launch attacks on Israeli forces and fire occasional rockets into Israel more than a year after the Palestinian militants' October 7 attack on southern Israel that ignited the war.
The militants stormed into Israel in that attack, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 others. They are still holding around 100 captives, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel's offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not say how many were fighters but say women and children make up more than half of the fatalities. The war has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced around 90 per cent of its population of 2.3 million people, often multiple times.
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