At least 30 dead in Gaza school airstrike, Israel says targeted militants

By Nidal al-Mughrabi, Emily Rose and Ramadan Abed

CAIRO/JERUSALEM/GAZA (Reuters) -At least 30 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school housing displaced people in Gaza on Saturday, Palestinian health officials said, an attack that Israel said targeted militants who were using the compound.

The Hamas-run government media office said 15 children and eight women were among those killed in the strike in the central town of Deir Al-Balah. More than 100 people were wounded, the media office and the Gaza health ministry said.

Israel's military said it had targeted militants operating there and that it had taken steps to reduce the risk to civilians.

At Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah, ambulances rushed the wounded in for treatment. Some people arrived on foot, their clothes stained with blood.

Reuters footage showed people returning to the site of the bombing to check on their belongings, and fires burning in the area. Walls were blasted and debris scattered in the schoolyard, where some cars were damaged.

Um Hasan Ali, a displaced woman living at the school, said it had only been a couple of months since she returned to Gaza from Egypt with her daughter who had been taken there for medical treatment. Now her daughter had been wounded in the strike and taken to hospital, she said.

Another woman, Ibtihal Ahmed, told Reuters she was sitting in a neighbour's tent when she heard heavy bombing.

"I started running, my daughter was one place and I was at another, I saw people running towards the place that was struck. The people sheltering in Khadija school are all wounded people, they are innocent and this should not happen to them," she said.

Israel says Hamas uses Gaza's civilians as human shields by operating within densely populated areas, humanitarian zones, schools and hospitals, which Hamas denies.

"Hamas terrorists used the (school) compound as a hiding place to direct and plan numerous attacks against IDF troops and the State of Israel. In parallel, the terrorists developed and stored large quantities of weapons inside the compound," the military said in a statement.

CEASEFIRE TALKS

CIA Director William Burns was expected to meet this weekend in Rome with his Israeli and Egyptian counterparts and Qatar's prime minister for talks on a Gaza ceasefire and the release of hostages by Hamas.

Israeli public broadcaster Kan said Israel's response to the latest proposal was handed to Washington on Saturday ahead of the expected meeting - the latest effort to reach agreement after months in which Israel and Hamas have blamed each other for the stalemate.

More than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive in Gaza, according to the local health authorities, who do not distinguish between fighters and non-combatants.

Israel, which has lost 328 soldiers in Gaza combat, estimates that fighters account for about a third of the Palestinians killed since it launched its military offensive in response to a Hamas-led attack in southern Israel in October.

About 1,200 people were killed and 250 were taken hostage in the Oct. 7 attack, according to Israeli tallies.

On Saturday, the military said it had instructed Palestinians to evacuate the southern neighborhoods of Khan Younis, where it was going to "forcefully operate" against militant groups, and move to the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone.

Israeli attacks in Khan Younis on Saturday killed 14 people, health officials said. The military said it had killed militants in the area and seized many weapons.

Earlier, five Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a house in al-Bureij, in central Gaza, and four others were killed in a strike on a house in Rafah, near the border with Egypt, medics said.

U.N. and humanitarian officials accuse Israel of using disproportionate force in the war and of failing to ensure civilians have safe places to go, which it denies.

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesperson for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, blamed the Israeli attacks on the support of the United States.

Violence in the West Bank had been increasing before the Gaza war began and it has escalated since then, with frequent Israeli raids and Palestinian street attacks.

On Saturday, an Israeli drone killed one person in the West Bank city of Nablus after Palestinian gunmen fired at an Israeli army post and injured a soldier, the military said.

A local militant group claimed the attack and said the person who was killed in the Israeli drone strike was a member.

(Reporting by Emily Rose and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo, Ramadan Abed in Gaza and Ali Sawafta in Ramallah;Editing by Frances Kerry and Helen Popper)