At least 80 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike early Saturday morning that hit a school being used as a shelter in Gaza City, local authorities said.
Israel said the school was being used as a command center for Hamas, a claim the militant group denied. The strike marks one of the deadliest since the onset of the war.
Fadel Naeem, the director of the al-Ahli hospital in the city, said his hospital had received 70 bodies from the strike and body parts from 10 other people killed, The Associated Press reported. Gaza’s Health Ministry said another 47 people were wounded.
Israel acknowledged the strike, arguing that at least 20 Hamas and “Islamic Jihad militants” were operating from the compound.
“Based on Israeli intelligence, approx. 20 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants, including senior commanders, were operating from the compound struck at the Al-Tabaeen school, using it to carry out terrorist attacks,” Nadav Shoshani, a spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) wrote.
“According to an initial review, the numbers published by the Hamas-run Government Information Office in Gaza, do not align with the information held by the IDF, the precise munitions used, and the accuracy of the strike,” he added.
A spokesperson for the Civil Defense first responders, who operate under the Hamas-run government, told the AP that three missiles hit the school and mosque. The school is also holding about 6,000 displaced people seeking shelter.
In recent months, Israel has ramped up its attacks on schools in Gaza, with the U.N. Human Rights Office finding at least 17 attacks on campuses in the previous month — seven in the last eight days. Those strikes have killed 163 people, per local officials.
As of July 6, the U.N. found that 477 out of 564 schools in Gaza have been directly hit or damaged in the war.
The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borell, condemned Israel’s strikes on schools in recent days, including the Saturday strike.
“Horrified by images from a sheltering school in Gaza hit by an Israeli strike, w/ reportedly dozens of Palestinian victims,” he wrote on social media platform X. “At least 10 schools were targeted in the last weeks. There’s no justification for these massacres.”
Israel struck two other schools on Thursday in Gaza City, killing at least 15 people, the AP reported.
Schools have increasingly begun to serve as shelters since Israel has destroyed much of the physical infrastructure in Gaza following Hamas’s initial attack on Israel on Oct. 7. More than 250 civilians were taken hostage during the event and more than 1,200 Israeli’s were killed.
The strike also comes as the U.S., Egypt and Qatar work with both Israel and Hamas to secure a cease-fire and hostage return deal in the region.
Egypt and Qatar, the two mediators of the conflict alongside the U.S., condemned Israel for the strike. Egypt said the strike was evidence that Israel is not serious about reaching a peace deal, while Qatar demanded an investigation of the “heinous crimes against civilians.”
“Egypt considered the continued perpetration of these large-scale crimes, and the deliberate killing of such large numbers of unarmed civilians whenever mediators intensify efforts to reach a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, as clear evidence of the Israeli side’s lack of political will to end this brutal war,” the Egyptian foreign ministry wrote in a statement.
Qatar called the strike a “horrific massacre” and a “flagrant infringement of the fundamental precepts of international humanitarian law.”
“The State of Qatar reiterates its call for conducting an urgent international investigation by dispatching independent UN investigators to probe the ongoing targeting by Israeli occupation forces of schools and shelters for displaced people,” the statement reads.
The Associated Press contributed reporting.