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By Nidal al-Mughrabi
CAIRO (Reuters) -An Israeli airstrike on a school sheltering displaced people in central Gaza killed at least 28 people including women and children on Thursday, while three hospitals in the north were told to evacuate, putting patients' lives at risk, medics said.
The strike, in which many more were wounded, occurred in the city of Deir Al-Balah where a million people have taken shelter after fleeing fighting elsewhere after more than a year of war.
The Israeli military said on Thursday it had carried out a "precise strike on terrorists" who had a command and control centre embedded in a school.
"This is a further example of the Hamas terrorist organisation’s systematic abuse of civilian infrastructure in violation of international law," a military statement said.
The Palestinian militant group denies such accusations. Medics said 54 other people were injured at the school.
In Gaza's north, the Israeli military was pursuing an offensive begun six days ago when it sent its troops into Jabalia, the largest of Gaza's eight historic refugee camps, and the nearby towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya.
On Thursday, the military said it had killed at least 12 militants from Hamas and the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad who it said were operating from a command and control centre in what was previously a medical compound in Jabalia. It said large quantities of weapons and ammunition were stored at the site.
Palestinian health officials say at least 130 people have been killed so far in the operation, which Israel says is aimed at preventing Hamas from regrouping.
The military has told residents to evacuate an area in which the U.N. estimates more than 400,000 people are trapped.
The health officials said the Israeli military on Wednesday gave patients and medics 24 hours to leave the Indonesian, Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals or risk being stormed as happened earlier in the war at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
Israel, which has not yet commented on evacuation orders for medical facilities, has said Hamas has command facilities concealed within the hospitals, which it denies.
Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, said eight patients, mostly children with critical shrapnel wounds, were at risk inside intensive-care units should the army force their evacuation, and the hospital was also running out of fuel.
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Abu Safiya called for international pressure on Israel to allow medical staffers in north Gaza's three hospitals to continue to operate, saying: "Our message is a message of peace for the sake of those children."
Ramesh Rajasingham, director of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said an OCHA-World Health Organization team could not reach Kamal Adwan Hospital despite having secured a green light from the Israeli military.
"The team was forced to wait at the holding point for hours, and, ultimately, the mission had to be aborted. And that's not an unusual practice," Rajasingham told a U.N. meeting. "In September, less than 10% of coordinated missions to the north (of Gaza) were facilitated by the Israeli authorities.
“The essential conditions for effective aid operations are severely lacking or entirely absent,” he added.
Israeli bombardment near Kamal Adwan Hospital has already caused some damage to the facility, medics said. They said they know of many dead bodies lying on the roads outside the hospital because of Israeli fire.
The Israeli military told residents of Jabalia and nearby areas to head to humanitarian-designated zones in southern Gaza, but Palestinian and U.N. officials say there are no safe places to flee to in the densely populated enclave.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, told the U.N. Security Council: "Hundreds of thousands of people are again being pushed to move to the south, where living conditions are intolerable."
Residents said Israeli forces had encircled Jabalia and ordered them to leave through one corridor. They said troops were interrogating those leaving and making arrests, while anyone trying to leave via a different route gets fired at.
Hamas and ally Islamic Jihad said they continued to fight Israeli forces with anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs.
The Israeli military said it killed dozens more militants, seized arms and dismantled militant infrastructure in the north.
Israel began its offensive after Hamas-led militants carried out a cross-border attack on southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
More than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive, the Gaza health ministry says. Most of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been displaced and much of the enclave has been laid to waste.
(Reporting and writing by Nidal al-Mughrabi. additional reporting by Emma Farge in Geneva; editing by Sharon Singleton, Mark Heinrich and Jonathan Oatis)
