The Palestinian Red Crescent said an Israeli airstrike on a Gaza school killed at least 28 people on Thursday, while the Israeli military reported it struck a Hamas command center.
"Palestine Red Crescent teams responded to 28 fatalities and 54 injuries following the Israeli occupation army's targeting of Rafida School," the organization said, referring to a school in Deir al-Balah.
Gaza's Hamas-run Health Ministry issued the same death toll in a statement.
The Israeli army said in a statement that the strike targeted Palestinian combatants operating from a command-and-control center "embedded inside a compound that previously served as the (Rafida) School."
It did not give a toll, but said the command-and-control center was used "to plan and execute terrorist attacks against Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops and the State of Israel."
Thursday's attack was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes on school buildings housing displaced Palestinians in Gaza, where fighting has raged for over a year.
On September 26, at least 15 people were killed in another strike on a school-turned-shelter in northern Gaza's Jabaliya camp, according to Gaza’s Civil Defense agency.
The Israeli military is currently engaged in an intense operation in Jabaliya.
Israel accuses Hamas of hiding in school buildings where thousands of Gazans have sought shelter –––– a charge denied by the Palestinian militant group.
‘Crimes against humanity’
Meanwhile, United Nations investigators said on Thursday that Israel is deliberately targeting health facilities and killing and torturing medical personnel in Gaza, accusing the country of "crimes against humanity."
"Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza's healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza," the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry said in a statement.
The country is "committing war crimes and crimes against humanity and of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities," it added.
The three-person commission, established by the UN Human Rights Council in May 2021 to investigate alleged international law violations in Israel and the Palestinian territories, published its second report since Hamas's October 7 attack a year ago, which sparked the ongoing war.
The report also highlighted abuse of Palestinian detainees in Israel and of hostages in Gaza, accusing both Israel and Palestinian armed groups of "torture" and sexual and gender-based violence.
Israel has accused the commission of "systematic anti-Israeli discrimination" and flatly rejected the findings of its June report, which also accused Israel of committing crimes against humanity, including of "extermination" in Gaza.
'Wanton destruction of healthcare'
"Israel must immediately stop its unprecedented wanton destruction of healthcare facilities in Gaza," commission chair Navi Pillay, a former UN rights chief, said in the statement.
By doing so, "Israel is targeting the right to health itself with significant long-term detrimental effects on the civilian population," she said.
The report found that Israeli security forces had "deliberately killed, detained and tortured medical personnel and targeted medical vehicles" in Gaza and restricted permits to leave the territory for medical treatment.
Such actions constitute numerous war crimes and "the crime against humanity of extermination," the commission said.
Israel's actions had caused "incalculable suffering" among child patients and were "resulting in the destruction of generations of Palestinian children and, potentially, the Palestinian people as a group," it said.
The report highlighted the death of Hind Rajab in January as "one of the most egregious cases."
The young girl called the Palestinian Red Crescent, pleading to be rescued, after her family's car came under fire in Gaza City.
Her body was eventually recovered along with six relatives and two Red Crescent rescue workers sent to find her.
The commission said it determined that the Israeli army's 162nd Division was responsible for the deaths, which constitute war crimes.
With AFP
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