Children among 20 killed in Israeli airstrike on Gaza school
Explosions struck outside a hospital in Gaza, setting fire to tents housing displaced Palestinians, ITV News Correspondent Peter Smith reports
At least 20 people have been killed in Gaza after an Israeli airstrike on a school on Sunday night, according to two local hospitals.
The school in Nuseirat was sheltering displaced Palestinians, including children, who were among the dead.
Meanwhile, explosions outside the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)-supported Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah on Monday left five dead and another 65 injured, the hospital said.
The strike set fire to a camp for displaced Palestinians near the hospital, leaving dozens with severe burns, according to local health authorities.
One MSF nurse, Eliza Sabatini, described the incident as a "scene of devastation", adding: "Tents caught on fire while people were sleeping."
She said: "The hospital treated 40 patients, including 10 children and 8 women; many of them with severe burns. 25 more injured patients had to be referred due to the lack of capacity.”
The facility was already treating a number of wounded people, after 27 people were killed in an Israeli attack on another school being used as a shelter for displaced people in Gaza on Thursday.
Israel said that it conducted a precise strike targeting a militant command and control centre located in a school in the central city of Deir al-Balah.
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The city of Jabaliya in northern Gaza has also come under fire, with 22 people being killed by Israeli bombardment on Saturday.
Israel has ordered a full evacuation of northern Gaza, but some 400,000 people are estimated to have remained in the region.
The evacuation order covers hospitals, and the Israeli military claimed it is working with local authorities to organise patient transfers.
Fares Abu Hamza, an official with the Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service, said the bodies of many people killed in strikes in recent days still have not been recovered.
“We are unable to reach them,” he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed claims his military is deliberately attacking United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon as “completely false.”
“It’s exactly the opposite,” he said in a video statement on Monday, adding that Israel had “repeatedly asked United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) to get out of harm’s way” and to “temporarily leave the combat zone.”
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