Gaza's civil defense agency said at least 31 people, including children, were killed in an Israeli strike Thursday on a school serving as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the war.
Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that women and children were among the dead, while six people were still unaccounted for in the strike on Dar al-Arqam School in the Al-Tuffah neighborhood, northeast of Gaza City.
Bassal had said earlier that more than 100 others were wounded in the attack.
"One of the missing was a pregnant woman who was expecting twins," he said.
The Israeli military said in a statement it had struck a "Hamas command and control center in the area of Gaza City."
"The command and control center had been used by the terrorists to plan and execute attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF troops," the military said.
It was unclear whether it was the same attack that targeted the school.
The military said it was unable to confirm whether the strike had hit the school.
Hamas condemned the attack, accusing the Israeli government of continuing its "targeting of innocent civilians as part of the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip."
Since the outbreak of the war in the Gaza Strip triggered by Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought refuge in schools and other facilities to escape the deadly violence.
The health ministry in Gaza said on Thursday that 1,163 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory since Israel resumed large-scale strikes on March 18, bringing the overall death toll since the war began to 50,523.
With AFP
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