Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal confirmed eight people, including two children and two women, were killed by Israeli shelling on the Halwa school in Jabalia in northern Gaza, where the Israeli army has been conducting a campaign of ethnic cleansing since October 2024.

Bassal said the strike would 30 people, including 19 children, and that the Halwa school housed "thousands of displaced people," according to AFP.

The attack was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes on school buildings housing displaced people in Gaza that killed and wounded thousands of civilians.

A strike on the United Nations-run Al-Jawni school in central Gaza on September 11 drew an international outcry after the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees, UNRWA, said six of its staff were among the 18 reported dead.

At least 46,537 Palestinians, a majority of them civilians, have been killed and nearly 110,000 injured in the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza, most of them women and children.

Research published in The Lancet medical journal on Friday estimates that the number of Palestinians killed during the first nine months of the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza was around 40 per cent higher than recorded by the territory's health ministry.