Israeli strike on Gaza school kills 22, including 15 children

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) targeted a school serving as a refugee camp in central Gaza on Sunday evening, killing at least 22 civilians, including 15 children, several media outlets reported on Monday, citing local emergency services.

The Nuseirat camp, which is located at the center of the Palestinian enclave, had been housing hundreds of people, according to the news outlet Ahram. Some 80 people were also injured in the attack, according to the BBC, citing a civil defense spokesman.

The IDF said it was looking into the reports of civilian casualties. It did not comment on the target of the shelling or the reasons for the strike. According to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the school building was going to be used to administer polio vaccines starting on Monday.

The Israeli military also killed four people and injured dozens more in a separate strike targeting the al-Aqsa hospital in central Gaza. The IDF stated its forces were targeting a “command-and-control center” of terrorists in a “precise strike.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the IDF’s actions and the large number of civilian casualties in the intensifying Israeli campaign. He “strongly urges all parties to the conflict to comply with international humanitarian law and emphasizes that civilians must be respected and protected at all times,” his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, told journalists on Monday.

West Jerusalem recently declared the UN secretary-general persona non grata, accusing him of failing to “unequivocally condemn” Iran over its missile attack against Israel.

Israel declared war on the Gaza-based Palestinian militant group Hamas last October, after fighters killed around 1,100 people and took roughly 250 hostages in a surprise attack on the Jewish state. After almost a year of Israeli air and ground operations in Gaza, nearly 42,000 people have been killed, the majority of them women and children, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry.

Israeli forces had also been waging a low-intensity operation against the Lebanese-based Hezbollah organization. Last month, however, Israel launched a major air campaign in Lebanon that was preceded by the apparent Israeli sabotage of thousands of Hezbollah communication devices. A ground invasion followed earlier this month and the death toll in Lebanon currently stands at over 2,000 people, including 127 children, according to the country’s Health Ministry.

On Monday, at least 21 people were killed and eight injured in an Israeli air raid on northern Lebanon, the ministry said.