Israeli airstrike hits school sheltering people in Gaza, killing at least 30

Israeli airstrikes hit a school being used by displaced people in central Gaza on Saturday, killing dozens, as the country’s negotiators prepared to meet international mediators to discuss a proposed ceasefire.

At least 30 people sheltering at a girls’ school in Deir Al-Balah were taken to Al Aqsa Hospital and pronounced dead, after a strike that Israel’s military said targeted a Hamas command and control centre used to store weapons and plan attacks.

At least seven children and seven women were among the dead taken from the school.

Civil defence workers in Gaza said thousands had been sheltering in the school, which also contained a medical site.

Gaza’s health ministry said at least 12 people had been killed in other strikes on Saturday.

An injured man lay on a stretcher on the ground. A body covered with a blanket and a dead toddler were inside the ambulance.

Inside the school, classrooms were in ruins. People were searching for victims under the rubble and some were gathering remains of those who were killed.

Earlier, Israel’s military ordered the evacuation of a part of a designated humanitarian zone in Gaza ahead of a planned strike on Khan Younis on Saturday.

The evacuation order was in response to rocket fire that Israel said originated from the area.

The military said it planned an operation against Hamas militants in the city, including parts of Muwasi, the crowded tent camp in an area where Israel has told thousands of Palestinians to seek refuge throughout the war.

The planned strike comes a day before officials from the US, Egypt, Qatar and Israel meet in Italy to discuss the ongoing hostage and ceasefire negotiations.

It is the second evacuation order issued in a week that has included striking part of the humanitarian zone, 20 square miles of tent camps that lack sanitation and medical facilities and have limited access to aid, United Nations and humanitarian groups say.

Israel expanded the zone in May to take in people fleeing Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population at the time had crowded.

According to Israeli estimates, about 1.8 million Palestinians are sheltering there after being uprooted multiple times in search of safety during Israel’s punishing air and ground campaign.

In November, the military said the area could still be struck and that it was “not a safe zone, but it is a safer place than any other” in Gaza.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said it was increasingly difficult to know how many people would be affected by the evacuation order because those sheltering under there were constantly being displaced.

“Referring to the orders as evacuation orders don’t do any justice to what this means,” said Juliette Touma, the agency’s director of communications.

“These are forced displacement orders. What happens is when people have these orders, they have very little time to move.”

Further north, Palestinians mourned the deaths of seven killed by Israeli airstrikes overnight on Zawaida, in central Gaza.

Deir al-Balah’s Al Aqsa hospital confirmed the count and Associated Press journalists saw the bodies.

The war in Gaza has killed more than 39,100 Palestinians, according to the territory’s health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.

The UN estimated in February that some 17,000 children in the territory are now unaccompanied, and the number is likely to have grown since.

The war began with an assault by Hamas militants on southern Israel on October 7 that killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostages.

About 115 are still in Gaza, about a third of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.