Authorities in Gaza said Israeli forces shelled a shelter at a United Nations.-run school on Thursday, killing at least 15 people as the Palestinian death toll in the conflict climbed over 750 and attempts at a truce remained elusive, according to The Associated Press.
Ashraf al-Qidra, spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry, said that as well as the 15 dead, another 200 people had been wounded in the attack, the AP reported. The director of a local hospital said various medical centers around Beit Hanoun were receiving the wounded.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed his horror at the attack on the school at Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza strip, the AP reported.
"Many have been killed - including women and children, as well as U.N. staff," Ki-moon said in a statement, according to the AP. "Circumstances are still unclear. I strongly condemn this act."
The Israeli military said its troops were fighting gunmen from Hamas, which runs Gaza, in the area and that it was investigating the incident, the AP reported.
A spokesman for the U.N. relief agency said it had tried in vain to arrange an evacuation of civilians from the school with the Israeli army, and noted reports of Hamas rockets falling in the area at the same time, according to the AP.
The U.N. said the strike occurred as staff members were trying to arrange a humanitarian pause in the hostilities so they could evacuate the civilians from the compound in the northern town of Beit Hanoun, the AP reported.
Kamel al-Kafarne, who was in the school, said that they were waiting for U.N. staff to place people in buses when three tank shells hit, according to the AP. "We were about to get out of the school, then they hit the school. They kept on shelling it," he said.
Pools of blood lay on the ground and on students' desks in the courtyard of the school near the apparent impact mark of the shell, according to a Reuters photographer at the scene, the AP reported.
Scores of crying families who had been living in the school ran with their children to a hospital where the victims were being treated a few hundred meters away, according to the AP.
