At least 16 dead in Israeli attack on UN school used as a shelter in Gaza | News on the Israel-Palestine conflict

Dozens of Palestinians were also injured in a bomb attack on a school in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, the Government Media Office reported.

At least 16 Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli attack on a United Nations-run school in the Gaza Strip that houses displaced people, the Gaza government media office said, as Israel continues to bomb the besieged coastal area.

In a statement on Saturday, the government media office said more than 75 people were injured in the attack on the Al-Jaouni school in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

“We condemn the Israeli occupation for the ongoing crimes and massacres against civilians, children and women,” it said.

The Nuseirat facility, run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), is the latest school to be bombed by the Israeli military since the Gaza war began in early October.

Since October 7, at least 38,098 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip, and the besieged enclave is facing acute shortages of food, water, medicine and other humanitarian supplies.

On Saturday, dozens of Palestinians, including five journalists, were killed as the Israeli military increased its shelling of the area.

Videos taken at the site of the attack on the UNRWA school converted into a temporary shelter in Nuseirat show twisted metal on the collapsed building and a young boy digging in pools of blood on the ground.

Footage taken at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in nearby Deir el-Balah and confirmed by Al-Jazeera’s Sanad agency also shows children and teenagers being taken out of ambulances.

Among them was a girl with a bandaged arm, another with a bloody face and a boy with a bandage over his head. Rescue workers also tried to cover two bodies as they were rushed to the medical complex.

The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said 50 injured Palestinians had been taken to hospital.

Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary said hundreds of Palestinian families had sought shelter at Al-Jaouni School after fleeing Israeli bombings of other parts of Gaza.

The families “chose the middle area (of the Gaza Strip) because the Israeli forces said the middle area was a safe zone,” Khoudary said.

“Everyone in Gaza believes that they are not safe no matter where they go.”

The Israeli military had no immediate comment on Saturday’s deadly bombing.

An Israeli attack on a United Nations-affiliated school – also in the Nuseirat refugee camp – last month killed at least 40 people and injured dozens more, local authorities said.

Musab, a 17-year-old survivor of the bombing of the UNRWA school for boys in Nuseirat in early June, told the UN agency that his father was killed when “rockets rained down on the family.”

“Concrete slabs fell on us and suddenly we were surrounded by dead and injured people. All my family members were either injured or killed,” Musab said in a testimony released by UNRWA.

“We were sleeping when rockets rained down on us at two in the morning. They pulled us out of the rubble and all we saw was shrapnel, debris and dust. I am in shock and cannot comprehend that my father is dead! How are we supposed to go on living?”