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At least 28 people, including children, have been killed in a wave of Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip, according to the Gaza Civil Defense Agency.
Among the facilities hit was a school housing families of displaced people, which killed eight people, including four children, over the weekend, the agency said.
It comes as the UN calls on Israel to stop attacks on a hospital in northern Gaza.
The Israeli military says the Hamas command center was on the grounds of the Musa bin Nusair school in Gaza City, and has not commented on reports of attacks 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.”
Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for Gaza’s civil defense agency, told AFP that the school had been repurposed as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the war.
One displaced man who remained at the school, Abu, told BBC Arabic that the attack happened while he was sleeping.
“We were sleeping peacefully, and then suddenly we woke up to the sound of a very loud 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 the Israeli attacks on Gaza for the second day in a row.
He expressed his pain, thinking “about such cruelty, about the shooting of children, about the bombings of schools and hospitals.”
The director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Dr. Husam Abu Safiya, said his generators were injured and said the Israeli army had targeted a fuel tank.
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, appealed to the IDF to stop the attacks in the area of the hospital.
Saturday night’s reports of “bombing near Kamal Advan Hospital and the order to evacuate the hospital are deeply disturbing,” he said in a statement on social media.
“We call for an immediate ceasefire in the area of the hospital and for the protection of patients and medical workers.”
The hospital’s director also released a statement saying Israeli forces treated the hospital “like a military facility.”
“Anyone who goes outside the hospital is at risk of being targeted,” said Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya.
He added that rescheduling the hospital’s work would put patients at risk, and called on medical staff to “allow them to work without the threat of evacuation.”
Israel has not commented on reports of the evacuation order.
The BBC has approached the IDF for comment.
The Palestinian groups involved in the fighting said this to the BBC ceasefire agreement ‘closer than ever’.
More than 45 thousand Palestinians were killed during the 14-month war between Israel and Hamas, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
The war began when on October 7, 2023 militants led by Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israel, during which about 1,200 people were killed and another 251 people were taken hostage.
