The civil defence agency in Gaza said a strike Sunday on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians killed at least four people, the second such Israeli attack in two days.
The Israeli military, which has long accused Palestinian militants of using schools and other civilian infrastructure, confirmed the strike “in the area of the school” in Gaza City.
It claimed in a statement the school complex was used as a militant hideout and housed “a Hamas weapons manufacturing facility”.
The civil defence agency said Ihab Al-Ghussein, the Gaza government’s deputy labour minister, was among those killed in the strike on the Holy Family school.
The strike came a day after a UN-run school in the central Nuseirat refugee camp was hit, in an attack that the Gaza health ministry said killed 16 people and drew condemnation from the United Nations. Israel claimed militants were hiding there.
Hamas has repeatedly denied Israeli accusations that militants were hiding in civilian infrastructure.
The vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been displaced by Israel’s war on the strip, now in its 10th month, and many have taken shelter in UN-run schools across the besieged territory.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, expressed outrage at the repeated attacks on its premises.
“Another day. Another month. Another school hit,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said on X.
UNRWA spokesperson Juliette Touma told AFP that 190 – or more than half – of the agency’s facilities in Gaza have been hit, “some more than once”, since the war began in October.
“When the war started we closed the schools and they became shelters,” she said.