At least 30 dead in Gaza school airstrike; Israel says targeted militants

At least 30 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school housing displaced people in Gaza on Saturday, Palestinian health officials said, an attack that Israel said targeted militants who were using the compound.

The Hamas-run government media office said 15 children and eight women were among those killed in the strike in the central town of Deir Al-Balah. More than 100 people were wounded, the media office and the Gaza health ministry said.

Israel's military said it had targeted militants operating there and that it had taken steps to reduce the risk to civilians.

At Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah, ambulances rushed the wounded in for treatment. Some people arrived on foot, their clothes stained with blood.

Reuters footage showed people returning to the site of the bombing to check on their belongings, and fires burning in the area. Walls were blasted and debris scattered in the schoolyard, where some cars were damaged.

Um Hasan Ali, a displaced woman living at the school, said it had only been a couple of months since she returned to Gaza from Egypt with her daughter who had been taken there for medical treatment. Now her daughter had been wounded in the strike and taken to hospital, she said.

Another woman, Ibtihal Ahmed, told Reuters she was sitting in a neighbour's tent when she heard heavy bombing.

"I started running, my daughter was one place and I was at another, I saw people running towards the place that was struck. The people sheltering in Khadija school are all wounded people, they are innocent and this should not happen to them," she said.

Israel says Hamas uses Gaza's civilians as human shields by operating within densely populated areas, humanitarian zones, schools and hospitals, which Hamas