At least 80 people were killed after Israel attacked a U.N.-affiliated school in northern Gaza on Saturday, as the death toll surpassed 12,000.
Israel bombed Al-Fakhoura School in Jabalia, northern Gaza, which is affiliated with the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
Social media videos showed bodies covered in blood and dust on the floor of a building, where mattresses had been wedged under school tables in Jabalia, the Palestinian territory's biggest refugee camp.
"At least 50 people" were killed in an Israeli strike at dawn on the U.N.-run Al-Fakhura school in the camp, which had been converted into a shelter for displaced Palestinians, an official at Gaza's Hamas-controlled health ministry told AFP.
According to U.N. figures, some 1.6 million people have been displaced inside Gaza by six weeks of fighting.
A separate strike Saturday on another building in Jabalia camp killed 32 people from the same family, 19 of them children, the official said. The ministry released a list of 32 members of the Abu Habal family it said had died.
Palestinian medical and local sources told Anadolu Agency (AA) that "the bodies of the martyrs cover school's corridors," noting the difficulty of evacuating the injured and killed from the building, in which thousands of displaced civilians found shelter.
Earlier in the day, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Israel "is committing massacres in the Gaza Strip, the latest of which is the Al-Fakhoura School."
In a statement sent to Anadolu Agency (AA), the ministry said, "We condemn in the strongest terms the continuous mass massacres committed by the occupation forces against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, the most recent of which was the heinous massacre in Al-Fakhoura School, full of forcibly displaced people."
It said, "We consider this a new evidence proving that Israel's declared war on Palestinian civilians aims to empty the entire area of the northern Gaza Strip of any Palestinian presence.
"With this massacre, which targeted a UNRWA school, the occupation insults the international community and the U.N and belittles all ineffective international demands calling for the protection of civilians."
Since Israel started bombarding Gaza on Oct. 7, more than 12,000 Palestinians have been killed, including over 8,300 women and children, and more than 30,000 others have been injured, according to the latest figures.
Thousands of buildings, including hospitals, mosques and churches, have also been damaged or destroyed in Israel's relentless air and ground attacks on the besieged enclave.
An Israeli blockade has also cut Gaza off from fuel, electricity and water supplies and reduced aid deliveries to a trickle.
The Israeli death toll, meanwhile, is around 1,200, according to official figures.
Israel has told Palestinians to move from north Gaza for their safety, but deadly air strikes continued to hit central and southern areas of the narrow coastal territory.
On Saturday, hundreds of people fled on foot after the director of Gaza's main hospital said the Israeli army ordered the evacuation of the facility where some 2,000 people were trapped.
Columns of sick and injured – some of them amputees – were seen making their way out of Al-Shifa hospital toward the seafront without ambulances, along with displaced people, doctors and nurses, as loud explosions were heard around the facility.
On the way, an AFP journalist saw at least 15 bodies, some in advanced stages of decomposition, along a road lined by badly damaged shops and overturned vehicles as Israeli drones buzzed overhead.
The health ministry said 120 wounded, along with an unspecified number of premature babies, were still at Al-Shifa Hospital, which has become the focus of the recent fighting.
'Patients cannot leave'
In Gaza City, Israeli troops had called over loudspeakers to evacuate Al-Shifa "in the next hour" an AFP journalist at the hospital reported.
They also called the hospital's director, Mohammed Abu Salmiya, telling him to ensure "the evacuation of patients, wounded, the displaced and medical staff and that they should move on foot towards the seafront," he said.
But Israel's army denied ordering the evacuation, saying instead it had "acceded to the request of the director" to allow more civilians to leave.
According to Ahmed El Mokhallalati, a doctor at the hospital, "most of the medical staff and patients had left," but he was staying at Al-Shifa along with five other doctors.
Despite the evacuation order, "many patients cannot leave the hospital as they are in the ICU beds or the baby incubators," Mokhallalati said on X, formerly Twitter.
The U.N. estimated that 2,300 patients, staff and displaced Palestinians were sheltering at Al-Shifa before Israeli troops entered it on Wednesday.
Israel has imposed a siege on Gaza, allowing just a trickle of aid in from Egypt but barring most shipments of fuel.
Israel has come under scrutiny for targeting hospitals in north Gaza but says Hamas is using the facilities, a claim rejected by the group and medical staff. Israeli propaganda videos on social media came under fire for false claims.
More than half of Gaza's hospitals are no longer functional due to Israel's attacks, damage, or shortages and people are waiting four to six hours for half the normal portion of bread.
UN condemns Israeli attack on hospital
The head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees on Saturday denounced strikes on U.N.-run schools in Gaza after the Hamas-run health ministry said at least 50 people had been killed in Jabalia.
Philippe Lazzarini said he had seen "horrifying images and footage of scores of people killed and injured" in one of his agency's schools "sheltering thousands of displaced." "These attacks cannot become commonplace; they must stop," he posted on X, formerly Twitter.