At least 22 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli attack on a school sheltering homeless people in Gaza City, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The Palestinian Civil Defense Center in Gaza confirmed that Israel targeted the Zeitoun school in eastern Gaza City on Saturday.
Those killed included 13 children, six women, and a three-month-old baby, the Government Information Office said in a statement, adding that Israel had committed a “horrible massacre”.
At least 30 people were injured, the Ministry said, including several with severe burns. Two people are still missing.
The spokesperson of the Department of Public Protection, Mahmud Bassal, noted that thousands of people who left their homes sought shelter at the school.
The Israeli military said in a statement that the air force “conducted a direct strike against terrorists who were operating inside the Hamas control center in Gaza City”.
It said the target was “placed inside” the al-Falah school, which is close to the buildings of the Zeitoun School.
The Israeli military often accuses the group of using public spaces for military purposes. Hamas denies this.
This is the latest in a series of Israeli raids on school buildings housing displaced people in Gaza, where tens of thousands of Palestinians driven from their homes by Israeli attacks and evacuation orders have long taken refuge.
The strike at the United Nations-run al-Jawni School, in central Gaza, on September 11, sparked international outrage after the UN refugee agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) said six of its staff were among the 18 reported dead.
According to the press office, Israel has bombed 181 shelters so far.
William Deere, director of the UNRWA Office in Washington, told Al Jazeera earlier this month that the Israeli army targeted 190 UN-run centers during the war, “most of them more than once”. That’s regardless of whether the agency shares its GPS coordinates with the Israeli military.
On August 1, at least 15 people were killed in an Israeli attack on the Dalal al-Mughrabi school in Gaza City, and on August 3, another 16 were killed in a bomb attack on the Hamama school, also in Gaza City.
On August 4, at least 30 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Nassr and Hassan Salama schools, west of Gaza City, and on August 8, at least 17 were killed in attacks on Abdul Fattah Hamouda and az-Zahra schools, which are also located in Gaza City.
And on August 10, more than 100 people were killed and 150 others injured after Israeli forces bombed al-Tabin school, east of Gaza City.
At least 41,391 Palestinians, mostly residents, have been killed in Israel’s war in Gaza since last October, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, including 119 deaths in the past 72 hours.
It said on Saturday that 95,760 people have been injured in the Gaza Strip since the war began following the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7 last year.