Gaza officials say 15 killed in strikes on schools that Israel says were used as Hamas command centres

The Israeli military said on Thursday it had struck Hamas command centres embedded in the areas of two schools in the Gaza Strip that were used to carry out attacks against Israeli troops.

The territory's Civil Emergency Service said 15 people were killed and 30 injured in the bombings of the Abdel-Fattah Hamoud and Al-Zahra schools in the Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City.

"Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, surveillance and additional intelligence," the military said.

"The school compounds were used by Hamas terrorists and commanders as command-and-control centres, from which they planned and carried out attacks against Israel Defence Forces troops and the state of Israel," it said.

That claim has not been independently verified.

Parts of the Al-Zahra school remained standing on Thursday as people walked the grounds trying to find their belongings and remains of their loved ones. 

"What happened was a massacre," Abu Karim Ali told a freelance videographer as he pointed with blood-stained hands toward rubble left by the strike.

Ali said many of the victims were children. "They didn't do anything.They were innocent children." 

The Israeli military accused Hamas of exploiting civilians and civilian properties for military purposes, an allegation Hamas denies.

Footage circulated on social media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed casualties being brought to a hospital on donkey carts.

Airstrikes hit houses in Al-Bureij camp

Israeli forces stepped up airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing at least 40 people, Palestinian medics said.

Airstrikes hit a cluster of houses in central Gaza's Al-Bureij camp, killing at least 15 people, and the nearby Al-Nuseirat camp, killed four, medics said. Nuseirat and Bureij are among the densely populated enclave's eight historic camps and seen by Israel as strongholds of armed militants.

Witnesses of those strikes told the freelance videographer, Mohamed El Saife, that they came without warning. 

"What was hit was an entire block ... not one or two or three houses," said Ahmed Halawa. "There was no warning or anything, all of a sudden the rockets fell on us." 

Israeli aircraft also bombed a house in the heart of Gaza City in the north, killing five Palestinians, while another airstrike in the southern city of Khan Younis killed one person and wounded others, according to medics.

The armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad said they were firing anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs at Israeli forces operating across Gaza, causing deaths and injuries among them.

Reports of rocket launching pads struck

Israel's military said it had struck dozens of military targets across Gaza over the past 24 hours, including rocket launching pads.

Hamas-led militants set off the Gaza war on Oct. 7 last year with a cross-border rampage into Israeli communities, killing 1,200 Israelis and foreigners and seizing some 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Since then, at least 39,699 Palestinians have been killed, including 22 within the past 24 hours, and 91,722 injured in Israel's air and ground war in Gaza, the Gaza Health Ministry said in an update on Thursday.

The ministry in the Hamas-run territory does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its death lists.

In a post to its Telegram channel, Hamas said the attacks on the schools in northern Gaza were a "brutal massacre" with a purpose of causing "displacement and terrorizing defenceless civilians." The post went on to say that Hamas called on the international community to hold Israel accountable for "the brutal crimes they have committed."  

Potential wider war in the region

As Gaza's war churns on, Israel has been battening down for another attack expected in the coming days following vows from Iran and its Lebanon proxy Hezbollah to retaliate for the assassinations last week of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut.

A relatively contained conflict between Israel and Hezbollah along its northern border, a spillover from the Gaza fighting, now threatens to spiral into an all-out regional war.

On Thursday, dozens of Palestinians rushed into Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis to bid farewell to slain relatives before carrying them away for burials.

Reuters footage showed relatives moving out the bodies of their loved ones in plastic bags with names written on them, and holding special prayers before the funerals.

New orders to leave Khan Younis

The Israeli military renewed evacuation orders to Palestinian residents in several districts in eastern Khan Younis, saying it would act forcefully against militants who had unleashed rockets from those areas.

The army posted the evacuation order on X, and residents said they had received text and audio messages.

Residents said dozens of families had begun to leave their homes and head west toward Al-Mawasi, a humanitarian-designated area but one that is overcrowded by displaced families from around the enclave.

Food charity says off-duty worker killed

On Thursday, the World Central Kitchen (WCK), a U.S.-based, non-governmental humanitarian agency, said that a Palestinian staff member, Nadi Sallout, had been killed while apparently off-duty on Wednesday near Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. The WCK said it was seeking further details.

The Israeli military said it did not know of any such incident, adding that it had been in contact with WCK.

In April, seven WCK employees were killed in an Israeli airstrike, spurring it to suspend operations for nearly a month.

Israel said then its inquiries had found serious errors and breaches of procedure by its military, and that two senior officers had been dismissed and senior commanders reprimanded.