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At least 28 people, including children, have been killed in a wave of Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip, according to Gaza’s civil defense agency.
A school housing displaced families was among the facilities attacked, killing eight people, including four children, over the weekend, the agency said.
It comes as the UN calls on Israel to stop its attacks near a hospital in northern Gaza.
The Israeli military claimed that there was a Hamas command center inside the Musa bin Nusair school compound in Gaza City, and has not commented on reports of attacks by the hospital.
“Hamas systematically violates international law,” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stated on social media, adding that Israel’s response would be to “act with force and determination against terrorist organizations.”
Gaza civil defense agency spokesman Mahmoud Bassal told the AFP news agency that the school had been repurposed as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the war.
A displaced man who had been staying at the school, Abu, told BBC Arabic that the attack occurred while he was sleeping.
“We were sleeping peacefully, when suddenly we woke up to the sound of a very powerful explosion,” he said.
Another man, Mahmoud, said he was sleeping in a tent in the school yard when the attack occurred.
“Stones and shrapnel were flying, the school walls fell on our heads,” he told the BBC in Arabic.
On Sunday, Pope Francis condemned Israeli attacks on Gaza for the second day in a row.
He expressed his pain when thinking “about so much cruelty, about the machine-gunning of children, about the bombing of schools and hospitals.”
Kamal Adwan Hospital director Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya said its generators had been hit and claimed the Israeli military was targeting the fuel tank.
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called on the IDF to stop attacks in the vicinity of the hospital.
Reports on Saturday night of “a shelling near Kamal Adwan Hospital and the order to evacuate the hospital are deeply worrying,” he said in a statement on social media.
“We call for an immediate ceasefire in the vicinity of the hospital and the protection of patients and health personnel.”
The hospital’s director also issued a statement saying that Israeli forces were treating the hospital “as if we were a military facility.”
“Anyone leaving the hospital is at risk of being attacked,” said Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya.
He added that relocating hospital operations would put patients at risk and called for healthcare staff “to be allowed to operate without threat of evacuation.”
Israel has not commented on reports of an evacuation order.
The BBC has contacted the IDF for comment.
Palestinian groups involved in the fighting told the BBC that a ceasefire agreement is “closer than ever”.
More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed during the 14-month war between Israel and Hamas, according to figures from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
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.
