By Nidal al-Mughrabi
GAZA (Reuters) -An Israeli air strike killed at least 300 people at a Gaza City hospital on Tuesday, authorities in the Palestinian enclave said, and the United Nations said an Israeli strike also hit one of its schools being used as a shelter.
A Gaza civil defence chief said on Al-Jazeera television that more than 300 people were killed at Al-Ahli al-Arabi Hospital. A Gaza Health Ministry source said at least 500 people were killed. Both departments are under the Hamas-run government.
Israel’s military said it was “still ironing out all the details” on the reports of the strikes on both the hospital and the school.
Health authorities in Gaza say at least 3,000 people have been killed in Israel’s intense 11-day bombardment since Hamas militants rampaged into Israeli towns on Oct 7, killing more than 1,300 soldiers and civilians.
News of the hospital blast came on the eve of U.S. President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel on Wednesday, and with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visiting on Tuesday.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, “It’s not acceptable to hit a hospital”. Egypt said it denounced the attack “in the strongest terms”.
Video obtained by Reuters showed several ambulances arriving at another Gaza hospital carrying people injured at Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital. One man was staggering, bleeding heavily from the head. A boy was being carried on a stretcher.
Earlier on Tuesday, the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA said an Israeli air strike had killed at least six people after striking one of its schools that has been functioning as a shelter for displaced people.
The agency said dozens of people were injured by the strike, which it said caused “severe structural damage” to the school, where at least 4,000 people were sheltering.
“They had and still have nowhere else to go,” UNRWA quoted Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini as saying in a statement.
Hamas said the blast at the hospital mostly killed displaced people. A senior official for the internationally recognised Palestinian Authority, which operates in the West Bank but not in Gaza, described it as a massacre.
(Reporting By Moaz Abd-Alaziz, Nidal al Mughrabi and Ali Sawafta; Additional reporting by Emily Rose; Writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
