A wave of Israeli air strikes targeting central and southern Gaza have killed at least 50 people and injured an estimated 200, with one strike hitting a school where thousands were seeking shelter.
Palestinian health ministry officials said at least 30 people were killed in an air strike on the Khadija school in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
Wounded people poured into the nearby Aqsa hospital, while images from Deir al-Balah showed families carrying injured children for treatment.
Taoiseach Simon Harris condemned the attack, saying it was a “further demonstration of brutal, unconscionable violence”.
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“Targeting an area populated with displaced families is inhumane and despicable. Israel continues to use disproportionate force and is engaging in a war that is having an unacceptable level of civilian death and injury, especially to children.
“I again call for an immediate ceasefire, the release of all hostages and unimpeded access for aid into Gaza. The bloodshed and suffering need to end,” he said.
The Associated Press reported that people searched the ruined classrooms for remains.
It said that close to the hospital where those killed in the strike were taken, its reporters witnessed people fleeing as an ambulance drove in the opposite direction. Inside the ambulance, it said, lay a dead toddler as well as another body shrouded in a blanket.
Israeli forces also conducted strikes outside Gaza, including a drone strike on the Balata refugee camp near Nablus in the West Bank, killing one, after an Israeli soldier was wounded at a nearby checkpoint.
Israeli air strikes on the southern Lebanese town of Kafr Kila reportedly killed four people, as militants in Lebanon responded with a barrage of rocket fire into Israeli territory.
Mediators from the Israeli intelligence service are expected to hold talks on Sunday in Rome with the head of the CIA, members of the Egyptian intelligence services and Qatari officials in an effort to spur a deal to return Israeli hostages held in Gaza as well as agree a ceasefire. Militants in Lebanon and Yemen have said they will halt their attacks if a ceasefire deal on Gaza is put in place.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they targeted the Khadija school in Deir al-Balah in Gaza because the area was used as a “command and control complex” by Hamas militants.
They said “many steps were taken to reduce the chance of harming civilians”, including using precision weapons and intelligence. Tens of thousands of civilians have sought shelter in Deir al-Balah for months, crowding into every available piece of space after many were displaced several times from other parts of Gaza.
The strike in Deir al-Balah was accompanied by further strikes on Khan Younis, after a week of deadly fighting in Gaza’s second city. Strikes in Khan Younis killed at least 23 people and wounded 89, according to Palestinian health officials, as civilians were forcibly displaced from the city for the fourth day.
The IDF said a map demonstrating areas where civilians should seek shelter would be “adjusted” owing to the dangers associated with rockets fired towards Israeli territory as Hamas militants were present in a designated humanitarian area.
The IDF called on Palestinians in the south of Khan Younis to “temporarily evacuate” to a shrinking humanitarian zone in the coastal area of al-Mawasi, to where hundreds of thousands have fled in recent months after fighting in the southern city of Rafah as well as a renewed Israeli assault on Khan Younis.
“The early warning to civilians is being made in order to mitigate harm to the civilian population and keep civilians away from areas of combat,” it said.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, estimates that more than 80 per cent of the Gaza Strip “has been placed under evacuation orders or designated as a no-go zone”, while many seeking shelter there describe being displaced upwards of five times. Israeli air strikes have also targeted areas previously designated as safe.
The UN’s office for humanitarian affairs (OCHA) said earlier this week that evacuation orders in Khan Younis had been “issued in the context of ongoing attacks by the Israeli military and gave no time for civilians to know from which areas they were required to leave or where they should go”.
OCHA labelled these mass evacuation orders “confusing” and said Israeli forces had issued demands for civilians to flee while increasing their attacks on the same areas, as well as potential escape routes. – Guardian