14 killed in Israeli strike on Gaza school

An Israeli air strike Wednesday hit a central Gaza school, with the territory's civil defence agency reporting 14 killed in the facility-turned-displacement shelter.

The vast majority of the Gaza Strip's 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once by the war with many seeking safety in school buildings.

Israeli forces have struck several such schools in recent months.

The Al-Jawni school in central Gaza's Nuseirat, already hit several times during the war, was struck again on Wednesday, civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

"The number of martyrs has risen to 14," he said, updating an earlier toll of 10 killed in the "Israeli bombing of Al-Jawni school" which also wounded numerous people.

A medical source at Nuseirat's Al-Awda health centre in central Gaza told AFP that 15 people killed in the strike had been brought to hospitals in the area.

Nine were brought to Al-Awda, and six to Al-Aqsa Martyrs's Hospital, in the central Gaza city of Deir el-Balah.

AFP journalists witnessed several unconscious men and women brought to Al-Aqsa hospital on stretchers, or in the arms of medics in the case of children.

"Most of the people took refuge in schools and the schools were bombed and the martyrs were mostly children and women," Basil Amarneh, a local, said at the hospital.

The Hamas government media office said about 5,000 displaced people were sheltering at the school, which used to be run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, when it was hit on Wednesday.

Al-Jawni has been hit at least five times in more than 11 months of war, Bassal said.