14 Palestinians killed in Israeli attack on UN-run school: sources

GAZA - At least 14 Palestinians were killed and 10 others wounded in an Israeli airstrike on a UN-run school sheltering displaced people in the central Gaza Strip, according to Palestinian sources on Wednesday.

Palestinian security sources told Xinhua that an Israeli warplane fired at least one missile at the school-converted shelter in the al-Nuseirat refugee camp. Medical sources said the strike killed 14 people and wounded 10 more, while the Hamas-run Gaza government media office confirmed that aid workers were among the victims.

Meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that the Israeli Air Force has conducted a precise strike on militants operating inside a Hamas command and control center in the al-Nuseirat area.

It added Hamas militants "plan and execute attacks against IDF troops and the State of Israel" using this center embedded inside a compound that previously served as the Al-Jaouni school.

The attack came following a previous Israeli bombing of the UN-run school on July 6, which killed at least 16 Palestinians, most of them children and women.

Also on Wednesday, the al-Nuseirat refugee camp saw a separate Israeli airstrike targeting a residential house, leaving at least four Palestinians dead, Palestinian security sources told Xinhua.

The Israeli army also launched an airstrike on Wednesday on the Al-Qarra family home in the town of Khuza'a, east of the Khan Younis city in southern Gaza, killing at least 13 people from the family, including children and women, according to local sources and eyewitnesses.

There has been no comment from the Israeli side on these two airstrikes.

Israel has been conducting a large-scale offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip to retaliate against a Hamas rampage through the southern Israeli border on Oct 7, 2023, during which Hamas militants killed 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages.

The Palestinian death toll from ongoing Israeli attacks in the strip has risen to 41,084, Gaza-based health authorities said in a statement on Wednesday.