Israeli strike on Gaza school-turned-shelter kills 21

Gaza’s civil defence agency reported 21 killed in an Israeli strike on Saturday, the latest attack on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians where the Israeli military said it targeted militants.

A spokesman for the civil defence agency, Mahmud Bassal, said more than half the dead at the Gaza City school were children. According to witnesses, a group of orphans had earlier gathered at the building to receive sponsorship from a local aid group.

“Civil defence crews recovered [the bodies of] 21 people, including 13 children and six women”, one of whom was pregnant, said Bassal.

The health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip gave the same death toll for what the Israeli military said was “a precise strike on terrorists who were operating inside a Hamas command-and-control centre … embedded inside” an adjacent school.

Footage showed the ground floor of the school-turned-shelter covered with concrete rubble and mangled chairs and tables, and a gaping hole in the ceiling of what appeared to be a classroom.