Gaza rescuers say 25 killed in Israeli strike on school-turned-shelter

Gaza City, Palestinian Territories — Gaza's civil defence agency said at least 25 people were killed Thursday in an Israeli air strike on a school serving as a shelter for people displaced by the war.

Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP the death toll had risen to 25, with more than 100 others wounded in the strike on Dar al-Arqam School in the Al-Tuffah neighbourhood, northeast of Gaza City.

Meanwhile, Hamas has rejected the latest Israeli proposal on a Gaza truce, two officials from the movement told AFP on Wednesday.

"Hamas has decided not to follow up on the latest Israeli proposal presented through the mediators" said one of the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, and accusing Israel of "blocking a proposal from Egypt and Qatar and trying to derail any agreement".

A UN aid official said on Wednesday that the mass grave in Rafah where the bodies of 15 medics were found after the Israeli army fired on ambulances illustrates the "war without limits" that Israel is leading in Gaza.

"It was shocking" to see medical workers "still in their uniforms, still wearing gloves, killed while trying to save lives," said Jonathan Whittall, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the Palestinian territories.

"The ambulances were hit one by one," he said in a video conference after a mission to Gaza uncovered the mass grave. Of the 15 bodies, eight were members of the Palestinian Red Crescent and one was from the United Nations.

UN chief Antonio Guterres also expressed revulsion Wednesday at the killings.

"The secretary-general is shocked by the attacks of the Israeli army on a medical and emergency convoy on March 23 resulting in the killings of 15 medical personnel and humanitarian workers in Gaza," spokesman Stephane Dujarric told a briefing.

OCHA said Tuesday that the first team of first aid workers was killed by Israeli forces on March 23, and that other emergency and aid teams were hit one after another over several hours while searching for their missing colleagues.

After several weeks of ceasefire in Gaza, Israel resumed its bombardments on March 18 and announced Wednesday the extension of its military operations to seize "large areas" of the territory.

Whittall said 64 percent of Gaza is under displacement orders, and that 200,000 people have been uprooted since the end of the ceasefire.

He said the 25 bakeries run by the UN's World Food Programme have been closed since Tuesday.

"It's an endless loop of blood, pain, death and Gaza has become a death trap," he said. "What is happening here defies decency, it defies humanity, it defies the law."