Death toll from Israeli bombing in central Gaza rises to 16

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GAZA -- At least 16 Palestinians were killed, most of them children and women, in an Israeli bombing of a school sheltering displaced people in the Nuseirat area in the central Gaza Strip on Saturday afternoon, the Palestinian official news agency WAFA reported.

The Al-Jaouni school was bombed for the third time since the onset of the current Palestinian-Israeli conflict, WAFA said.

The Israeli military said it was looking into the report about the incident, according to Israeli media.

In a statement on Saturday, the Hamas-run Gaza government media office said the attacked school sheltered about 7,000 displaced people, adding that since the outbreak of the conflict, the Israeli army has bombed more than 17 schools and displacement and shelter centers inside the Nuseirat refugee camp.

UN statistics estimated earlier this week that the number of people internally displaced within Gaza has risen to 1.9 million people, or about nine out of ten people in the Strip.

During the past 24 hours, the Israeli military killed 29 people and wounded 100 others, Gaza-based health authorities said in a statement on Saturday morning. Among those killed were five local journalists, raising the death toll of journalists since Oct. 7 to 158, according to the media office.

The Palestinian death toll in the Gaza Strip has reached 38,098, with 87,705 injuries since the Palestinian-Israeli conflict broke out in early October 2023, according to health authorities in Gaza.