An Israeli attack killed at least 20 people and wounded another 150 at a traffic roundabout in Gaza City on Thursday as Palestinians waited for humanitarian aid, Hamas health officials said.
The Israeli military said it was investigating the report.
Also in central Gaza, Palestinian health officials said a nighttime Israeli airstrike on a house in Al-Nusseirat refugee camp killed six people.
Meanwhile, the death toll from a Wednesday strike on a United Nations training center in Khan Younis in southern Gaza rose to 12, with more than 75 wounded, according to Thomas White, a senior official with the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
The U.N. relief agency did not directly blame Israel, although earlier it had said the facility was hit by tank fire and Israel is the only force with tanks in Gaza’s second largest city. The Israeli military said it had "currently ruled out" that the strike was carried out by its aircraft or artillery but that it was still investigating the attack.
It said the building might have been hit by a Hamas rocket.
Israeli tanks bombarded areas around two hospitals in Khan Younis, forcing displaced Palestinians to scramble away from the city to look for safe shelter. The Israeli attacks are part of its efforts to end Hamas control of Gaza, the narrow territory along the Mediterranean Sea.
Gaza health officials said at least 50 Palestinians had been killed in Khan Younis in the past day, including two children in an Israeli air strike that hit a residential home. The city is now encircled by Israeli armored forces and under almost non-stop aerial and ground fire, residents say.
The Hamas-controlled health ministry says more than 25,700 people have been killed and another 63,000 wounded in Gaza since the shock October 7 Hamas attack in southern Israel, when militants killed about 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages.
The U.S. government has created a channel with Israel to discuss worries about incidents in Gaza in which civilians have been killed or wounded by Israeli attacks, and civilian infrastructure has been targeted, according to a Thursday report by Reuters.
The channel was established after a meeting earlier this month between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Israel’s war Cabinet.
The head of the World Health Organization called for a cease-fire to the conflict in an address to the organization’s governing body Thursday, during which he described the conditions in Gaza as “hellish.”
“War doesn't bring solution, except more war, more hatred, more agony, more destruction. So let's choose peace and resolve this issue politically," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the WHO Executive Board in Geneva.
The U.S. and some Middle East countries are trying to negotiate a new cease-fire to halt the fighting, perhaps for 30 days, to allow the release of more hostages and the release of jailed Palestinians held by Israel. About 100 hostages held by Hamas and 240 Palestinians jailed by Israel were freed in a late November week-long cease-fire.
But no new cease-fire agreement has been reached.
A U.N. court at the Hague in the Netherlands is expected to issue a ruling Friday on South Africa's request for an order to halt Israel's Gaza offensive. But Israel often ignores such international rulings and it is not clear whether it would honor any decision against it this time either.
A senior U.N. official called Thursday for "every measure" to be taken to protect civilians, following the Wednesday attack at the Khan Younis training center, where thousands of displaced Palestinians have been staying.
The U.N.’s White said the situation in Khan Younis shows a "consistent failure to uphold the fundamental principles of humanitarian law."
"Persistent attacks on civilian sites in Khan Younis are utterly unacceptable and must stop immediately," White said. "People are being killed and injured. As fighting intensifies around hospitals and shelters hosting the displaced, people are trapped inside, and lifesaving operations are impeded."
The United States, which has been a key Israeli ally in its war against Hamas, condemned the training center attack.
State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said, "You've heard me say it before, you've heard [Secretary of State Antony Blinken] say it before, but civilians must be protected, and the protected nature of U.N. facilities must be respected. And humanitarian workers must be protected so that they can continue providing civilians with the life-saving humanitarian assistance that they need."
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the U.N.’s Palestinian relief agency, said the Khan Younis compound had been clearly marked as a U.N. facility, and its coordinates had been shared with Israeli authorities.
Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
