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Children among dozens killed in Israeli strikes, Gaza officials say

At least 28 people, including children, were killed during Israeli military attacks across the Gaza Strip, according to the Gaza Civil Defense.

The families who left the schools where they were sheltering were among the centers that were hit, eight people including four children died at the weekend, said the organization.

This happened just as the UN issued a request for Israel to stop attacking a hospital in northern Gaza.

The Israeli military said the Hamas compound was inside the Musa bin Nusair school in Gaza City, and did not comment on reports of an attack on the hospital.

“Hamas systematically violates international law,” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on social media, adding that Israel’s response would be “to act with force and determination against terrorist organizations”.

The spokesman for the civil defense in Gaza, Mahmoud Bassal, told AFP that the school has been repurposed as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the war.

One who was expelled from the school, Abu, told BBC Arabic that the attack happened while he was sleeping.

“We were sleeping peacefully, suddenly we were woken up by the sound of a very strong explosion,” he said.

Another man, Mahmoud, said he was sleeping in a tent in the school yard when the attack took place.

“Stones and debris were flying, the walls of the school fell on our heads,” he told BBC Arabic.

On Sunday, Pope Francis condemned Israel’s attack on Gaza for the second day in a row.

He expressed pain thinking about “so much cruelty, the shooting of children, and the bombing of schools and hospitals”.

The director of the Kamal Adwan hospital, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, said that its generators were hit and that the Israeli soldiers were heading for the fuel tank.

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, urged the IDF to stop attacking areas near the hospital.

Reports on Saturday night of “a bomb blast near Kamal Adwan Hospital and the order to evacuate the hospital are deeply troubling,” he said in a statement on social media.

“We ask for an immediate cessation of hostilities near the hospital and to protect patients and health workers.”

The director of the hospital also issued a statement saying that the Israeli army is treating the hospital “as if it were an army”.

“Anyone who goes outside the hospital is at risk of being targeted,” said Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya.

He also added that moving the operation of the hospital will put patients at risk, and said that health workers should be “allowed to work without being threatened that they will leave”.

Israel did not comment on reports of the evacuation order.

The BBC has contacted the IDF for comment.

Palestinian factions involved in the fighting have told the BBC that a deal to end the war is “closer than ever”.

More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed during the 14-month war between Israel and Hamas, according to figures from the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza.

The war began when gunmen led by Hamas launched an unprecedented attack in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which around 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were captured.


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