Dozens of people have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school-turned-shelter in southern Gaza.
The strike at the entrance to the school hit the tents of displaced families in the town of Abassan, east of Khan Younis, with most of the victims being women and children, according to Palestinian medical officials.
The Israeli military said the incident occurred when it struck a Hamas fighter who took part in the 7 October raid on Israel with a “precise munition”. It said it was reviewing reports civilians were harmed.
The strike killed at least 25 people, according to an Associated Press reporter who counted the bodies at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.
Health officials in the Hamas-run strip say at least 29 people were killed.
The attack happened as displaced people had gathered to watch a football match, eyewitnesses said.
“They were watching a football match. There were injuries and martyrs. I witnessed this… people thrown around
and body parts scattered, blood,” one young woman, Ghazzal Nasser, told Reuters.
“Everything was normal. People were playing, others were buying and selling [food and drinks]. There was no sound of
planes or anything.”
Meanwhile, advancing tanks in Gaza City have forced thousands to flee for increasingly vanishing refuge.
Israel’s new ground assault in Gaza’s largest city represents its latest effort to battle Hamas militants it says are regrouping in areas the army previously said had been largely cleared.
Large parts of the city have been destroyed after nine months of fighting and much of the population had fled earlier in the war, but several hundred thousand Palestinians remain in the north of the besieged enclave.
After Israel called for an evacuation of eastern and central parts of Gaza City on Monday, staff at two hospitals rushed to move patients and shut down, the United Nations said.
‘More than 5%’ of Gaza’s population killed or injured
Israel’s campaign in Gaza, sparked by Hamas’ attack on 7 October, has killed or wounded more than 5% of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Nearly the entire population has been displaced from their homes, many multiple times, and hundreds of thousands have sought refuge in packed tent camps.
