People gather around the corpses of Palestinians killed by an Israeli strike on a school used as a temporary shelter in Gaza City on August 10, 2024, that killed more than 100 people. AFP
"The death toll is now between 90 to 100 and there are dozens more wounded. Three Israeli rockets hit the school that was housing displaced Palestinians," Gaza's civil defence agency spokesman Mahmoud Bassal told AFP.
The government media office said there were "more than 100 martyrs" in the strike.
The strike hit without warning in the early morning before sunrise as people were praying at a mosque inside the school, according to Abu Anas, a witness who worked to rescue people.
“There were people praying - there were people washing - and there were people upstairs sleeping, including children, women and old people," he said.
“The missile fell on them without warning. The first missile, and the second. We recovered them as body parts.”
The occupation targeted two floors in the school, the first of which was housing women and the ground floor was a prayer room for the displaced, the civil defence agency told Al Jazeera.
The strike on the Tabeen school in central Gaza City also wounded 47 people, the Health Ministry’s Ambulance and Emergency Service said.
The facility, like almost all of Gaza’s schools, has been used as a shelter for people who have been forced to flee their homes by the war.
Three missiles ripped through the school and the mosque inside, where about 6,000 displaced people were taking shelter from the war, said Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesperson for the Civil Defense first responders who operate under the Hamas-run government.
Many of the dead were unrecognisable, he said, adding that he expected the death toll to rise. Many of the casualties were women and children, he said.
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.
Israel has blamed the civilian deaths in Gaza on Hamas, claiming the resistance group endangers noncombatants by using schools and residential neighbourhoods as bases for operations and attacks. However, these claims have consistently been proven wrong, with Israeli allegations involving hospitals and schools being repeatedly discredited.
In its statement Saturday, the Israeli occupation army said the school was located next to a mosque serving as a shelter for Gaza City residents.
The strike came as American, Qatari and Egyptian mediators renewed their push for the two parties to achieve a cease-fire agreement that could help calm soaring tensions in the region following the Israeli assassination of top Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and a senior Hezbollah commander in Beirut. Israel’s war on Gaza has killed more than 39,600 Palestinians, mostly children and women, and wounded more than 91,700 others, according to the 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 about 50 square kilometres (19 square miles) on the Gaza coast.
* This story was edited by Ahram Online.
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