Over 60 people dead in Gaza City as Israeli airstrike hits school-turned-shelter

The Health Ministry’s Ambulance and Emergency service said the strike on the Tabeen school in central Gaza City also wounded 47 people.

The Israeli military acknowledged the strike, claiming without evidence that it hit a Hamas command center within the school.

It is the latest Israeli strike on a school housing displaced people in Gaza since the Israel-Hamas war started some 10 months ago. The facility, like almost all of Gaza Strip’s schools, has been used as a shelter for people who have been forced to flee their homes by the war.

According to the United Nations, 477 out of 564 schools in Gaza have been directly hit or damaged in the war as of July 6. In June, an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in central Gaza killed at least 33 people, including 12 women and children, according to local health officials.

The war was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, in which militants from Gaza stormed into southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and abducting 250 others.

Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 39,600 Palestinians and wounded more than 91,700 others, according to the enclave's Health Ministry .

More than 1.9 million of Gaza’s pre-war population of 2.3 million have been driven from their homes, fleeing repeatedly across the territory to escape offensives . Most are now crowded into ramshackle tent camps in an area of about 50 square kilometers (19 square miles) on the Gaza coast.