Local journalists and residents said Thursday’s strike took place in the early hours of Thursday at al-Sardi school, which is in a south-eastern area of the densely-populated, decades-old camp, where the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, provides services.
Videos shared on social media showed the destruction of several classrooms in one of the school’s buildings, as well as bodies wrapped in white shrouds and blankets.
Dead and wounded people were rushed to the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital, in the nearby town of Deir al-Balah, which has been overwhelmed since the Israeli military began a new ground operation against Hamas in central Gaza this week.
The BBC is working to verify the details of the strike in Nuseirat camp. Reports on the exact number of dead have varied.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said 40 people were killed, including 14 children and nine women, and 74 others were injured.
Meanwhile, Unrwa’s commissioner general, Philippe Lazzarini, said that at least 35 people were killed and many more injured. The agency’s director of communications, Juliette Touma, told the BBC that “the figures are coming from our own Unrwa colleagues on the ground”.
Witnesses described a scene of devastation following the strike.
“I was asleep when the incident occurred. Suddenly, we heard a loud explosion and shattered glass and debris from the building fell on us,” Udai Abu Elias, a man who was living at the school, told BBC Arabic.
“Smoke filled the air and I couldn’t see anything. I didn’t expect to make it out alive. I heard someone calling for survivors to come out from under the rubble. I struggled to see as I stumbled over the bodies of the martyrs.”
Unrwa said 6,000 displaced people were sheltering in the school complex at the time. Many schools and other UN facilities have been used as shelters by the 1.7 million people who have fled their homes during the war, which has lasted almost eight months.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned the strike through a spokesperson, saying that UN premises must be “inviolable” and protected by “all parties” during conflicts.
