At least 14 Palestinians killed in Israeli strike on Gaza school

A separate Israeli strike in Khan Younis killed 11 as the United Nations polio vaccination drive continues in the north.

At least 14 people, including two children and a woman, have been killed in an Israeli air attack on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza’s Nuseirat camp, according to the Palestinian Civil Defence agency and hospital officials.

Witnesses told Al Jazeera that people were waiting for food when Israeli jets struck jets struck the United Nations-run al-Jaouni school in Nuseirat camp in central Gaza on Wednesday.

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, who visited the site, said he saw a “tremendous amount of destruction” with “piles of rubble scattered around the area” and a missile stuck in the ground.

He said emergency workers had “been digging the rubble with their bare hands due to the lack of basic equipment”.

Fourteen people killed in the attack were brought to al-Awda and Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospitals nearby, officials from the facilities said. At least 18 people were wounded in the strike, they said.

The Israeli army said in a statement that the air force targeted a Hamas command and control centre.

Without providing evidence, it said the compound was used to plan and carry out attacks against Israeli forces in Gaza and against Israel.

The school is at least the sixth to be targeted by Israeli shelling or air raids since August 1.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians driven from their homes by Israeli offensives and evacuation orders are sheltering in Gaza’s schools.

Khan Younis attack

Earlier on Wednesday, an Israeli attack hit a home near the southern city of Khan Younis, killing 11 people, including six brothers and sisters from the same family who ranged in age from 21 months to 21 years old, according to the European Hospital, which received the casualties.

Israeli jets also struck a group of people waiting to buy bread outside a bakery west of Gaza City, according to the Civil Defence.

A spokesperson for the agency said at least three people were killed and seven wounded in the Israeli air raid on the Nassr neighbourhood.

An Israeli strike late Tuesday on a home in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza killed nine people, including six women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry and the Civil Defence.

The Civil Defence said the home belonged to Akram al-Najjar, a professor at the al-Quds Open University, who survived the strike.

Israel’s 11-month-old assault on Gaza has killed at least 41,084 people and wounded another 95,029, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

People use a blanket to transport a victim after an Israeli air strike hit a school in Nuseirat, in the central Gaza Strip, on September 11, 2024 [Eyad Baba/AFP]

Polio vaccinations continue

A campaign to vaccinate Gaza’s children against the polio virus continues in the north “against all odds”, including Israeli attacks on UN health workers and their vehicles, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

It said that nearly 530,000 children have received the vaccine across the Gaza Strip.

UNRWA also said its staff are working “around the clock to reach all children under 10”.

A campaign to vaccinate a final 200,000 children in north Gaza, the part of the enclave hardest hit by Israel’s 11-month war, began on Tuesday.

It follows the vaccination of more than 446,000 Palestinian children in central and south Gaza earlier this month.

(Al Jazeera)

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Al Jazeera and news agencies