Key Points
- Israel has targeted a school in Gaza, claiming it housed Hamas fighters.
- Gaza's media office has denied Israel's claims, calling the strike on the UN school in Nuseirat a "brutal crime".
- Officials in Gaza said dozens of civilians were killed in the attack.
Israel has hit a Gaza school with what it described as a targeted airstrike on up to 30 Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters inside, and a Hamas official says 40 people were killed including women and children sheltering at the United Nations site.
Ismail al-Thawabta, the director of the Gaza government media office, rejected Israel's claims that the UN school in Nuseirat, in central Gaza, had hidden a Hamas command post.
"The occupation uses lying to the public opinion through false fabricated stories to justify the brutal crime it conducted against dozens of displaced people," Thawabta told the Reuters news agency.
Israel's military said its fighter jets had carried out a "precise strike" and circulated satellite photos highlighting two parts of a building where it said the fighters were based.
"We're very confident in the intelligence," military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner said, accusing Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters of deliberately using UN facilities as operational bases.
The school, run by the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, was sheltering 6,000 displaced people at the time, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said.
"At least 35 people were killed and many more injured," he wrote on X.
The building was once used as a school, but with no schools now operating in Gaza it was being used as a shelter, UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said. Source: AAP / Mohammed Saber / EPA
Thawabta and a medical source said 40 people had been killed.
The United Nations condemned the "horrific, tragic" attack.
"It's just another horrific example of the price that civilians are paying, that Palestinian men, women and children who are just trying to survive, who are being forced to move around in sort of a death circle around Gaza, trying to find safety, are paying," spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said.
Israel's military said its fighter jets had carried out a "precise strike" on the site. Source: AAP / Mohammed Saber/EPA
In an apparent blow to a , Hamas' leader Ismail Haniyeh said on Wednesday the group would demand a permanent end to the war in Gaza and Israel's withdrawal as part of a ceasefire plan.
Haniyeh's remarks appeared to deliver the Palestinian militant group's reply to Biden's proposal. Washington had said it was waiting to hear an answer from Hamas to what Biden described as an Israeli initiative.
"The movement and factions of the resistance will deal seriously and positively with any agreement that is based on a comprehensive ending of the aggression and the complete withdrawal and prisoners swap," Haniyeh said.
Asked whether Haniyeh's remarks amounted to the group's reply to Biden, a senior Hamas official replied to a text message from Reuters with a "thumbs up" emoji.
Since a brief week-long truce in November, all attempts to arrange a ceasefire have failed, with Hamas insisting on its demand for a permanent end to the conflict, while Israel says it's prepared to discuss only temporary pauses until the militant group is defeated.
Israel has bombarded Gaza since , according to the Israeli government.
More than 36,000 people have been killed in Gaza since 7 October, according to the health ministry in Gaza.
The 7 October attack was a significant escalation in the long-standing conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Israel announced a new operation against Hamas in central Gaza on Wednesday, where Palestinian medics said airstrikes had killed dozens of people.
The armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad said they had fought gun battles with Israeli forces on Wednesday in areas throughout the enclave and fired anti-tank rockets and shells.
Two children were among the dead laid out on Wednesday in the city's al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, one of the last hospitals functioning in Gaza. Mourners said the children had been killed along with their mother, who had been unable to leave when others in the neighbourhood did.
"This is not war, it is destruction that words are unable to express," said their father Abu Mohammed Abu Saif.
