The Civil Defence Agency in Hamas-run Gaza said that 15 people were killed in a strike on a school sheltering war displaced where the Israeli military said it had targeted "terrorists".
The strike on the UN-run Abu Araban site in central Gaza's Nuseirat camp was the fifth on a school-turned-shelter in eight days.
The Abu Araban school was housing "thousands of displaced people," Civil Defence Agency Spokesman Mahmud Bassal told journalists, adding that most of the dead were women and children.
Schools in Nuseirat were the target for two of the earlier school strikes as Israel keeps up its offensive against Hamas Palestinian militants who triggered the war with their October 7 attack on Israel.
The Israeli military said its air force "struck a number of terrorists who were operating in the area of UNRWA's Abu Araban school building in Nuseirat".
It said the building had "served as a hideout" and base for "attacks" on Israeli troops.
We need your consent to load this comcast-player contentWe use comcast-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
AFPTV images showed the three-storey complex standing, with clothes and bedding airing out over its railings. A wall bearing the UN logo had been blown out, and rooms inside were damaged.
On 6 July, Israeli aircraft hit Al-Jawni school, also run by the United Nations relief agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), in Nuseirat. UNRWA said about 2,000 people were sheltering there at the time.
Earlier this week, Israel hit another Nuseirat school, again saying it was targeting "terrorists".
The next day, a hospital source said at least 29 people died in a strike at the entrance to Al-Awda school in the Khan Younis area, southern Gaza.
Israel says Hamas uses schools, hospitals and other public infrastructure for military purposes. Hamas denies the accusation.
After the Al-Jawni strike, UNRWA spokesperson Juliette Touma told AFP that when the war began "we closed the schools and they became shelters".
Hamas say they have not left ceasefire talks after attack
Earlier, a senior Hamas official said that the Islamist group has not withdrawn from ceasefire talks with Israel after deadly attacks in Gaza that Israel said had targeted the group's military leader Mohammed Deif.
However Izzat El-Reshiq, a member of the political office of Hamas, accused Israel of trying to derail efforts by Arab mediators and the United States to reach a ceasefire deal by stepping up its attacks in the enclave.
The strike in the Khan Younis area of Gaza, in which at least 90 Palestinians were killed according to local health authorities, has put the ceasefire talks in doubt.
There had been increasingly hopeful signs that a deal could be reached to halt fighting and return hostages held in Gaza.
Two Egyptian security sources at ceasefire talks in Doha and Cairo said that negotiations had been halted after three days of intense talks.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was expected to convene his close circle of ministers later to discuss the talks.
The strike which targeted Deif killed Rafa Salama, commander of Hamas' Khan Younis brigade, the Israeli military said but there was no confirmation about the fate of the group's military leader.
"The strike in Khan Younis was a result of surgical intelligence," the head of the Shin Bet domestic security service said in a video released by the service from Rafah.
He said 25 Hamas operatives who took part in the deadly 7 October attack in southern Israel that triggered the war had been killed in the past week.
A senior Hamas official denied that Deif had been killed and the group said Israeli claims were aimed at justifying the attack.
Israel's military chief said in a televised statement that Hamas was concealing the truth about Deif's fate, but stopped short of confirming whether he was alive or dead.
Israeli forces have continued to press ahead with aerial and ground shelling of several areas across the coastal enclave, home to 2.3 million people, most of whom have been displaced by the war.
A strike on a UN-run school in Nuseirat camp, one of Gaza's eight long standing refugee camps, killed 15 Palestinians and wounded dozens more, Hamas media and health officials said.
The Israeli military said the site was used as a base for Hamas fighters to attack Israeli forces and said numerous steps were taken to limit the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions and intelligence.
Read more about the conflict in the Middle East
Residents said two missiles targeted the upper floor of the school, not far from the camp's local market, usually busy with shoppers, where displaced families have also taken shelter nearby.
Earlier, Israeli airstrikes on four houses in Gaza City killed at least 16 Palestinians and wounded dozens of others, according to medics on the ground.
The Gaza health ministry said at least 38,584 Palestinians have been killed and 88,881 others injured in Israel's military offensive since 7 October.
It added that 141 Palestinians were killed by Israeli military strikes across Gaza in the past day, the biggest one-day death toll in many weeks.
Gaza's health ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants but officials say most of the dead throughout the war have been civilians.
Israel has lost 326 soldiers in Gaza and says at least a third of the Palestinian fatalities are fighters.
The war began after a Hamas-led attack inside Israel on 7 October that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and saw around 250 taken hostage in Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.
