Ten killed at north Gaza food distribution centre, Unrwa says

Overnight, four people were killed when an Israeli aircraft struck a tented camp for displaced people next to al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah.

The Israeli military said it had conducted a “a precise strike on terrorists who were operating inside a command-and-control centre in the area of a parking lot”, and that it took measures to mitigate harm to civilians.

“Shortly after the strike, a fire ignited in the hospital’s parking lot, most likely due to secondary explosions. The incident is under review,” Lt Col Shoshani wrote on X. “The hospital and its functionality were not affected from the strike.”

A video posted online appeared to show secondary explosions, external, but it was not clear whether they were caused by weapons or fuel tanks.

A spokesman for al-Aqsa hospital, Dr Khalil al-Daqran, said more than 50 tents were burned and that it was struggling to treat about 50 people who were injured, including children, women and the elderly, as well as casualties from other recent Israeli strikes.

A resident of the camp, Umm Mahmoud Wadi, said her family lost everything.

“Where should I take my daughters? Winter is coming. There’s no bedding, no clothes, nothing. I’m devastated. The gas bottle exploded – and we [our world] exploded.”

On Sunday night, more than 20 people were reportedly killed by tank fire at a UN-run school being used as a shelter for displaced families in Nuseirat refugee camp, which just north of Deir al-Balah.

A spokeswoman for Unrwa told the BBC that it had been “another night of absolute horror for people in the Gaza Strip”.

Louise Wateridge said the severe damage to al-Mufti school in Nuseirat meant it could not be used for the second round of the major polio vaccination campaign in Gaza, which began in the centre of the territory on Monday.

Local medics and Unrwa workers are leading the effort to give drops of the vaccine to 590,000 children aged under 10 over the next two weeks.

The campaign was organised by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Unicef after the first case of polio in two decades was discovered in an unvaccinated baby in central Gaza, where 80% of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is now sheltering.

UN officials are pressing for humanitarian pauses to be respected during the vaccination drive.

“This is critical because we cannot issue vaccinations for children who are fleeing for their lives, who are forcibly displaced. We cannot issue vaccination while there are bombs coming from the sky,” Ms Wateridge said.

She added: “These pauses are in the daytime, there are very specific timeframes for us to reach these thousands of children. The strikes and the military operations do continue around that and it’s incredibly dangerous and terrifying experience to run any kind of humanitarian response in these conditions.”

Israel launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

More than 42,280 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.