Israel-Hamas war: At least 20 killed at school being used as shelter in Gaza, UN says
The UN says a school being used as a shelter has been damaged at the Jabalia Refugee Camp in Gaza, leaving 20 people reportedly dead.
Five people are understood to have also been injured at the camp.
Sky News has verified footage showing many injured people at the school, but has been unable to identify the cause. We are awaiting a response from the Israeli military.
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The footage shows panic break out at the site, with some running from the scene.
One man is seen holding his hands behind his head, while a woman is spotted frantically looking around before holding a hand to her cheek, visibly shocked.
Another individual is seen limping towards a wall with the help of another person.
Panic at Jabalia Refugee Camp
The sound of an ambulance siren joins shouts from the crowd, as the vehicle is briefly seen entering the gates to the school.
The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said it came “after two days of heavy bombardments in the area.”
“Earlier today, another shelter at Beach Refugee Camp was also damaged, with one child reportedly killed. Both locations are in the north of the Gaza Strip,” it added.
“Further south, two schools-turned-shelters in the Al Bureij Refugee Camp were hit. Two people were reportedly killed and 31 injured.”
The UN reported that since 7 October, nearly 50 UNRWA buildings and assets have been impacted, with some being directly hit.
This includes buildings being used as shelters that are currently hosting around 700,000 people, the UNRWA said in a statement.
“Across the Gaza Strip, these shelters should be a safe haven, under the flag of the United Nations. International humanitarian law leaves no doubt that civilians and civilian facilities must be protected,” it said.
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“To date, 72 UNRWA colleagues have been killed in Gaza since the war began, often with their families.
“How many more? How much more grief and suffering? A humanitarian ceasefire is overdue for the sake of humanity.”
A Palestinian boy weeps at a camp in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) earlier justified attacks on buildings such as hospitals, schools and mosques in Gaza by claiming Hamas uses the sites for operational purposes.
IDF posted a video on X, formerly known as Twitter, on 27 October which asked: “Where are Hamas’s headquarters? Are they under a school? A university? A mosque? A hospital?
It then claims the answer is “all of the above”.
The footage of the damage caused to the UN school also emerged after 15 people were killed when Israel struck the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza on Thursday.
Residents said dozens of people remained trapped under the rubble, with the blast creating a large crater and severely damaging buildings around the camp.
It came days after dozens were killed when Israel carried out a strike on a refugee camp in Jabalia, north of Gaza City.
Israel said it killed Ibrahim Biari, commander of Hamas’s Central Jabaliya Battalion, in the strike.
Biari was one of the leaders of the massacres in Israel on 7 October and had also been the “main leader” of Hamas’s combat operations since Israeli forces entered Gaza, IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said.
New pictures show the moment of impact as an Israeli missile hit a Beirut apartment block and exploded.
The block was one of five buildings destroyed by airstrikes on Friday alone.
Israel launched airstrikes in the southern suburbs of Beirut in a fourth consecutive day of intense attacks.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
An Associated Press photographer captured a sequence of images showing an Israeli bomb approaching and hitting a multi-storey apartment building in Beirut’s Tayouneh area.
Richard Weir, a senior crisis, conflict and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch, reviewed the close-up photos to determine what type of weapon was used.
“The bomb and components visible in the photographs, including the strake, wire harness cover, and tail fin section, are consistent with a Mk-84 series 2,000-pound class general purpose bomb equipped with Boeing’s joint directed attack munition tail kit,” he told AP.
Pics: AP
Smoke covers a building that collapses following the strike. Pic: AP
Deadly strikes as bombardment stepped up
Israel stepped up its bombardment this week – an escalation that has coincided with signs of movement in US-led diplomacy towards a ceasefire.
The Israeli military said its fighter jets attacked munitions warehouses, a headquarters and other Hezbollah infrastructure. It issued a warning on social media identifying buildings ahead of the strikes.
Meanwhile, an Israeli airstrike killed five members of the same family in a home in Ain Qana in the southern province of Nabatiyeh, Lebanon’s state media said.
The report said a mother, father and their three children were killed but didn’t provide their ages.
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Three other Israeli strikes killed six people and wounded 32 in different parts of Tyre province on Friday, also in south Lebanon, the report said.
Video footage also showed a building being struck and turning into a cloud of rubble and debris that billowed into Horsh Beirut, the city’s main park.
Residents check the site of the airstrike in Tayouneh, Beirut. Pic: AP
More than 3,200 people have been killed in Lebanon during 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah – most of them since mid-September.
About 27% of those killed were women and children, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
Israel dramatically escalated its bombardment of Lebanon from September, vowing to cripple Hezbollah and end its barrages in Israel.
Friday’s strikes come as Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister has asked Iran to help secure a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hezbollah.
The prime minister appeared to urge Ali Larijani, a top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, to convince the militant group to agree to a deal that could require it to pull back from the Israel-Lebanon border.
Iran is a main backer of Hezbollah and for decades has been funding and arming the Lebanese militant group.
On Thursday, Eli Cohen, Israel’s energy minister and a member of its security cabinet, said that prospects for a ceasefire with Lebanon were the most promising since the conflict began.
The Washington Post reported Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was rushing to advance a Lebanon ceasefire to deliver an early foreign policy win to his ally, US President-elect Donald Trump.
“Super high-IQ revolutionaries” who are willing to work 80+ hours a week are being urged to join Elon Musk’s new cost-cutting department in Donald Trump’s incoming US government.
The X and Tesla owner will co-lead the Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
And in a post on X, the official DOGE account put out a call to arms for people to sign up and help “dismantle government bureaucracy”.
The post said: “We are very grateful to the thousands of Americans who have expressed interest in helping us at DOGE.
“We don’t need more part-time idea generators.
“We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.
“If that’s you, DM this account with your CV. Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants.”
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Elon Musk speaking at an event held at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Pic: AP Photo/Alex Brandon
In a reply to an interested party, Mr Musk suggested the lucky applicants would be working for free.
“Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lost of enemies & compensation is zero,” the world’s richest man wrote.
“What a great deal!”
When announcing the new department, President-elect Donald Trump said Mr Musk and Mr Ramaswamy “will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies”.
Mr Musk has previously made clear his desire to see cuts to “government waste” and in a post on his X platform suggested he could axe as many as three-quarters of the more than 400 federal departments in the US, writing: “99 is enough.”
At least 10 people have been killed after a fire broke out at a retirement home in northern Spain in the early hours of this morning, officials have said.
A further two people were seriously injured in the blaze at the residence in the town of Villafranca de Ebro in Zaragoza, according to the Spanish news website Diario Sur.
Two people remain in a critical condition following the blaze. Pic: AP
They remain in a critical condition, while several others received treatment for smoke inhalation.
Firefighters were alerted to the blaze at the residence – the Jardines de Villafranca – at 5am (4am UK time) on Friday.
Several residents were treated for smoke inhalation. Pic: AP
Those who were killed in the fire died from smoke inhalation, Spanish newspaper Heraldo reported.
The residence is home to 82 elderly residents.
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The blaze started in one of the rooms, Fernando Beltran, the national government’s top official in the region, told reporters.
All of the victims were elderly residents, he added.
Relatives wait for news outside the care home. Pic: AP
Fire crews, paramedics and police officers remain on site, said a spokesperson for the regional government of Aragon who confirmed the fatalities.
It took firefighters several hours to extinguish the blaze, they said.
The cause of the fire is unknown and is being investigated.
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