Airstrike targets Hamas and Islamic Jihad operations center

An Israeli airstrike on a Gaza school compound housing displaced families killed around 100 people, the Hamas-run Gaza government said on Saturday, while the Israeli military said it had targeted Hamas militants and cast doubt on the Palestinian death toll.  

Video from the site showed body parts scattered on the ground and more bodies being carried away and covered in blankets on the floor. Empty food tins lay in a puddle of blood and burnt mattresses and a child's doll lay among the debris.

In another video, men prayed over a dozen body bags laid out on the ground. It was not immediately clear whether all the videos were filmed on the ground floor of the Tabeen school complex, in Gaza City. 

Gaza's Hamas-run media office said in a statement that the complex was attacked when people sheltering there were performing dawn prayers.

"So far, there are more than 93 martyrs, including 11 children and six women. There are unidentified remains," Palestinian Civil Defence spokesperson Mahmoud Bassal told a televised press conference.

Around 350 families had been sheltering at the compound, Bassal said - some of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced from their homes by Israel's onslaught on Gaza.

The upper floor housing families and the lower floor, used as a mosque, were both hit, he said. The Gaza health ministry did not immediately provide casualty details.  

The Israeli military said the death toll was inflated and that around 20 militants had been operating at the site.

"The compound, and the mosque that was struck within it, served as an active Hamas and Islamic Jihad military facility," Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said on X.  

He said the numbers published by the Hamas-run media office did not appear to correspond to the Israel Defense Forces' information.

A military official said the part of the mosque that was struck was reserved for men.

"This was verified by intelligence, and the strike was carried out using three small, precise munitions which cannot cause the scale of damage that the Palestinians are reporting," the official said.

Israel says Palestinian militants embed themselves among Gaza's civilians, operating from within schools, hospitals and designated humanitarian zones - which Hamas and its allies deny.