The attacks came as a high-level Israeli delegation visited Egypt to try to review Gaza truce negotiations.
At least 15 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes on a school housing displaced Palestinians in central Gaza, the Gaza government’s media office said.
Several other people were injured in the attack on the Hamama school in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported on Saturday.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s Hani Mahmoud reported from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza on Saturday that at least three bombs were dropped on the school as rescue workers and volunteers inside the building tried to help people escape from the rubble.
“These three bombs completely destroyed the facilities. This is a tactic that the Israeli army has used extensively in the past. The army drops a bomb that partially destroys the facilities, including the evacuation centers, killing a number of people, and then a few minutes later it drops more bombs,” he said.
The Israeli military said the school was being used as a command center for Hamas, the Palestinian group that rules Gaza, to hide fighters and manufacture weapons.
Hamas has denied Israeli accusations that it operates from civilian facilities such as schools and hospitals.
The group condemned the Israeli attacks on the school and said in a statement that “the occupation army uses lies as a pretext to target defenseless civilians in Gaza.”
In footage verified by Tel Aviv Tribune, victims of the Israeli attacks are seen arriving at al-Ahli hospital.
Among the injured were children, some of whom appeared unconscious, as medical staff desperately tried to treat them.
At the hospital, the scene was chaotic, with some wounded lying on the floor while mourning Palestinians lined the corridors.
According to the testimony of one of the injured, the raids were carried out without warning.
Earlier Saturday, Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip killed six people in a house in southern Rafah and two others in Gaza City, Gaza health officials said.
The Israeli military said its forces hit Hamas fighters and destroyed Hamas infrastructure in Rafah and elsewhere in the attacks.
In the occupied West Bank, two Israeli attacks killed nine fighters, including a local Hamas commander, on Saturday, Hamas said.
A Hamas statement added that one of those killed was a commander of its Tulkarem Brigades, while its ally Islamic Jihad said four of the men killed in the raids were its fighters.
The latest attacks came as a high-level Israeli delegation paid a brief visit to Cairo on Saturday to try to resume ceasefire negotiations in Gaza, sources at Egypt’s airport authority said.
The delegation returned to Israel a few hours later, Israeli media reported.
The chances of a breakthrough appear slim as regional tensions have escalated following the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on Wednesday, a day after an Israeli strike in Beirut killed Fuad Shukr, a senior military commander of the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, a Hamas ally.
Haniyeh’s death is part of a series of assassinations of senior Hamas officials as the Gaza war approaches its 11th month, and fuels concerns that the Gaza conflict is spiraling into a wider war in the Middle East.
Both Hamas and Iran have accused Israel of carrying out Haniyeh’s assassination and have vowed to retaliate. Israel has neither claimed nor denied responsibility for the assassination.
