Israeli Airstrikes Kill Over 20, Gazans Say, and Hit Another U.N. Building

Two Israeli strikes killed more than 20 people in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, including at a United Nations school turned shelter, according to local health officials, the latest in a string of recent bombardments that have hit U.N. buildings in the enclave.

Paramedics found at least five bodies and eight injured people at the former school in central Gaza, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, an emergency medical service. The building, in Nuseirat, was being used to shelter people displaced by the Israeli-Hamas war.

The Israeli military said it had been targeting militants operating inside the building. Hamas, it said, “systematically violates international law, exploiting civilian structures and the population as human shields.”

It was the sixth former U.N. school facility to be hit in 10 days, according to the main United Nations agency aiding Palestinian refugees in the area, UNRWA. Last Tuesday, at least 27 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike near the entrance to a school turned shelter on the outskirts of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, according to the local health authorities.

About 17 people were killed in a separate Israeli strike on Tuesday in Al-Mawasi, a coastal area west of Khan Younis that the Israeli military has designated as a “safer” zone, the Gazan Health Ministry said. The Israeli military said that its aircraft had been targeting an Islamic Jihad commander in Khan Younis, but did not say whether the strike had landed in the designated zone. It said it was looking into reports that civilians had been wounded in the strike.

An injured youth arriving at a hospital in Khan Younis on Tuesday.Credit…Bashar Taleb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images