Hamas-run ministry says Israeli strikes kill 50

More than 50 people were killed on Sunday in Israeli air and ground strikes in the Gaza Strip, according to local doctors and rescuers.

Among the dead were children, a cameraman working for the Al Jazeera television network and staff from the Civil Defense agency, they said.

The Israeli military said it attacked sites used by Hamas and the allied Palestinian Islamic Jihad armed group.

The Hamas-run Health Ministry said the deaths meant the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza during the 14-month war between Israel and Hamas had surpassed 45,000.

The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians, but reported in October that among the identified fatalities were 29,980 children, women and the elderly.

The figures are often disputed by the Israeli government, which says nearly 20,000 “terrorists” have been killed, but are widely accepted by UN agencies.

The war began when gunmen led by Hamas carried out an unprecedented attack in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, during which some 1,200 people were killed and another 251 were taken hostage.

Many of those killed Sunday were at a U.N.-run school being used as a shelter for displaced families in the southern city of Khan Younis.

Heartbreaking images showed a bloody scene on the third floor of the Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz school, with bodies of children apparently among those removed.

“People were safe, staying in their homes after saying the dinner prayer. They were sitting, sleeping and staying in their places,” Manal Tafesh, whose brother and children were among the dead, told the news agency. Reuters outside a store. mortuary.

Doctors said at least 13 people died, while a spokeswoman for the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) said she had heard reports of about 20 victims, many of them women and children.

“This just won’t stop. It’s so relentless the pain and suffering we continue to have,” Louise Wateridge told the BBC from central Gaza.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had “conducted a precise strike against Hamas terrorists operating within a command and control center” integrated within the school.

He also accused Hamas and other armed groups of exploiting civilians and using civilian infrastructure as human shields.

Doctors said several more people died at another school-turned-shelter in the northern town of Beit Hanoun, which the U.N. says has been under siege by Israeli forces for more than two months.

The UN said it was monitoring reports that more than 1,500 people were recently displaced after Israeli forces laid siege to the Khalil Aweida school and bombed it.

The IDF said on Sunday that its forces “conducted a targeted raid on a terrorist gathering point in the Beit Hanoun area.”

“In cooperation with the (Israeli Air Force), troops attacked dozens of terrorists from both the air and the ground, and more terrorists were detained,” he added.

Another attack hit a Civil Defense building in the Nuseirat urban refugee camp in central Gaza.

Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Basal said the attack killed the directors of its Nuseirat and Sheikh Radwan centers along with two volunteers, one of whom he named as Ahmad Baker al-Louh. Five other people were injured, three of them seriously, he added.

“The Israeli occupation has once again demonstrated to the world that there is no protection for humanitarian workers in Gaza and no compliance with international humanitarian law,” he said, adding that 94 Civil Defense workers had been killed since the start of the war.

Ahmad al-Louh was a cameraman for the Qatar-based Al Jazeera network, which strongly condemned what it called Israel’s “targeted killing” of its journalist.

He said Louh had been covering a Civil Defense rescue operation following an earlier attack on Sunday and that it came “just days after the attack on his house”.

“The network calls on all human rights and media organizations to condemn the systematic murder of journalists in cold blood by the Israeli occupation, the evasion of responsibilities under international humanitarian law, and to bring to justice the perpetrators of this heinous crime brought to justice,” a statement said.

The IDF said the Civil Defense building was used by “terrorists to plan and carry out an imminent terrorist attack against IDF troops.”

“Among the terrorists eliminated in the attack was Islamic Jihad terrorist Ahmad Bakr al-Louh, who previously served as a platoon commander in the Islamic Jihad Central Camps Brigade,” he alleged, without providing any evidence.

Al Jazeera did not comment on the Israeli allegation, but Louh’s cousin, Mahmoud, told the Associated Press.: “We were stunned by the Israeli declaration of occupation.”

“These claims are lies and misleading to cover up this crime,” he added.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 137 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Israel and Lebanon since the war began.