At the very least 16 persons have been killed in an Israeli air strike on a university in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian officials have reported.

Dozens additional have been injured in the attack on the building which was sheltering countless numbers of displaced persons at Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, according to the Hamas-operate health and fitness ministry.

Video clip from the scene shows grown ups and young children screaming in a smoke-crammed street covered in dust and rubble, as they run to aid the wounded.

The Israel Defence Pressure (IDF) stated it struck several “terrorists operating in structures found in the location of Al-Jaouni School”.

Eyewitnesses told the BBC that the assault targeted the higher flooring of the university, which is located in the vicinity of a occupied sector.

The BBC understands that up to 7,000 individuals have been using the constructing as shelter.

1 lady told the AFP news company how some young children were being killed as they ended up reading through the Koran when the creating was hit.

“This is the fourth time they have targeted the faculty with out warning,” she mentioned.

A neighborhood supply stated the target was a room allegedly applied by Hamas law enforcement. The BBC is unable to confirm this declare.

In a assertion posted to X – previously identified as Twitter – the IDF verified it had hit the school buildings, declaring it experienced taken “a lot of techniques” to “mitigate the threat of harming civilians, together with the use of exact aerial surveillance and further intelligence”.

Hamas militants have been utilizing the area as a “hideout” to carry out assaults versus IDF troops, it reported.

“Hamas proceeds to systematically violate worldwide regulation by exploiting civilian buildings and the civilian population as human shields for its terrorist assaults against the Point out of Israel,” it included.

Hamas referred to as the assault a “massacre” on “defenceless displaced civilians”.

Quite a few of the useless and wounded ended up girls, little ones and the aged, the group claimed through its English language Telegram channel.

Quite a few schools and other UN amenities have been utilized as shelters by the 1.7 million individuals who have fled their residences for the duration of the war, which has lasted practically 8 months.

A former attack in June on another packed UN-run faculty in Nuseirat killed at the very least 35 persons.

Community journalists instructed the BBC at the time that a warplane fired two missiles at school rooms on the prime flooring of the faculty.

Right after that attack, Israel’s navy claimed it experienced “conducted a precise strike on a Hamas compound” in the university and killed lots of of the 20 to 30 fighters it thought were being inside of.

The head of the UN company for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), which runs the college, explained the June incident as “horrific” and stated the assert that armed teams could have been inside of a shelter was “shocking” but could not be verified.

Israel’s war was triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on 7 October in which Hamas-led gunmen killed about 1,200 people today and took 251 others again to Gaza as hostages.

At least 38,098 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza as a outcome of Israel’s offensive, in accordance to the territory’s Hamas-operate well being ministry.