GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defence agency said at least 25 people were killed Thursday in an Israeli air strike on a school serving as a shelter for people displaced by the war.
Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP the death toll had risen to 25, with more than 100 others wounded in the strike on Dar al-Arqam School in the Al-Tuffah neighbourhood, northeast of Gaza City.
The Israeli military when contacted did not provide an immediate response, but said in a statement that it had struck a “Hamas command and control centre in the area of Gaza City”.
“The command and control centre 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.
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The military, when contacted by AFP, said that 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 tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought refuge in schools and other facilities to escape the deadly violence.
The health ministry in Hamas-run 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.
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