Gaza’s civil defence agency said Saturday an Israeli strike hit a school in Gaza City, killing 90-100 people, while the Israeli military said it had struck a Hamas command centre.

“Forty martyrs and dozens wounded after the Israeli bombing of the Al-Taba’een school in the Al-Sahaba area in Gaza City,” agency spokesman Mahmoud Basal said in a post on Telegram.

Basal described the incident as “a horrific massacre”, with some bodies catching fire.

“The crews are trying to control the fire to retrieve the bodies of the martyrs and rescue the wounded,” he said.

Israel’s army said Saturday it had “precisely struck Hamas terrorists operating within a Hamas command and control center embedded in the Al-Taba’een school”.

On Thursday, the agency said Israeli strikes had hit two schools in Gaza City, killing more than 18 people.

The Israeli military said at the time it had struck Hamas command centres.

The war in Gaza began with Hamas’s October 7 attack that resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Palestinian operatives seized 251 hostages, 111 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 39 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 39,699 people, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths.

Israel has vowed to destroy the Palestinian group in retaliation for its October attack, but during 10 months of war across the Gaza Strip, the military has found itself returning to some areas to fight the militants again.

Israel’s military on Friday said troops were operating around Khan Yunis, the southern Gaza city from which soldiers had withdrawn in April after months of fierce fighting with Hamas.

After the military issued an evacuation order for parts of Khan Yunis, AFPTV images showed a crowd of people flowing through dusty, damaged streets on foot or on donkeys and motorcycle carts piled with belongings.

By Friday, the United Nations Humanitarian Office OCHA estimated that “at least 60,000 Palestinians may have moved towards western Khan Yunis in the past 72 hours”, said UN spokeswoman Florencia Soto Nino.

The Gaza war has already pulled in Iran-aligned groups in the region, and fears of a broader Middle East war have surged following vows of vengeance for the killing of two senior militants, including Hamas’s political leader.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

By dusk, the streets of Khan Yunis stood completely deserted and eerily quiet. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Crowds fleeing Khan Yunis after an Israeli evacuation order gave way to empty streets on Friday as Palestinian residents tried to escape a new Israeli military operation in Gaza’s main southern area.

“They threw leaflets at us, ordering us to evacuate”, Reem Abu Hayya told AFP, referring to the flyers that Israeli forces drop from planes to order the evacuation of areas ahead of a military operation.

The Khan Yunis area had already seen evacuation orders in late July, and heavy fighting that devastated the area earlier this year.

“We don’t know where we’re going, and we have sick and disabled people with us. Where can we go?” Reem Abu Hayya asked AFP as she stood on the street in front of a building reduced to a pile of rebar and broken concrete.

In a besieged territory that has been consistently bombed over the past 10 months and where supplies enter with great difficulty, people carried all they could as they fled on Thursday.

AFP journalists saw one young man carrying planks of wood loosely tied in bundles, to be used as shelter structure or fuel in the near future.

With petrol scarce, only the most fortunate drove, often with mattresses piled high on the car roof. The vast majority walked. They carried their belongings in plastic and garbage bags, on donkey-puled carts, bikes, strollers or wheelchairs.

By dusk, the streets of Khan Yunis stood completely deserted and eerily quiet, AFP journalists reported. Only the ruins of buildings damaged in earlier strikes still stood.

The flyers dropped Thursday ordered residents to leave eastern towns of Khan Yunis governorate including Al-Salqa, Al-Qarara, Bani Suheila, and neighbourhoods in the city of Khan Yunis.

“Hamas and terrorist organisations continue to launch rockets from your areas”, read the flyers which echoed past orders and warned that the Israeli army “will act forcefully against these elements”.

Late last month Philippe Lazzarini, who heads the United Nations agency for Palestinian Refugees, UNRWA, said on social media site X that only “14% of areas in Gaza” were not subject to evacuation orders.

On Friday, the military said it launched a new operation in Khan Yunis following “intelligence indicating the presence of terrorists and terror infrastructure” there.

“The troops are engaging in combat both above and below-ground to eliminate terrorists in the area while locating and dismantling weaponry and terrorist infrastructure,” the military said in a statement.

– ‘We are exhausted’ –

The military has often returned to Gaza to areas where it had previously completed major operations against Palestinian militants, only to find them resurfacing or to act on intelligence about the location of hostages.

“Enough! For both, the Jews and Hamas! Both of them should look at the people of Gaza, have mercy on us for God’s sake,” Ahmed al-Najjar, angry at the war and the prospect of yet another displacement, told AFP.

War in Gaza began when Hamas Palestinian militants on October 7 attacked southern Israel, resulting in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 39,699 people in Gaza, according to the health ministry of the Hamas-run territory, which does not provide details of civilian and militant deaths.

Mohammad al-Farra, from Sheikh Nasser in the east of Khan Yunis, also expressed frustration at the several displacements his family has lived through.

“We were the first to return to our home… as soon as the military operation in our area ended, to escape the heat, the displacement, and the hardship”, the 46-year-old told AFP.

“Then the occupation returned to drive us out again, making us suffer the tragedy multiple times over”, he said, referring to Israel. “We are exhausted. The war must end immediately so that we can feel human again, even just a little”.