Medical sources said at least 15 people had been killed in Israeli airstrikes across various areas of the Gaza Strip since dawn on Thursday.
Hours after the first phase of a polio vaccination campaign wrapped up in central Gaza, an Israeli airstrike hit the courtyard of hospital there.
The strike outside al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital occurred overnight, shortly before the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday that the effort to vaccinate children had shifted to the southern part of the Gaza Strip, beginning the second phase of the campaign.
UN officials had said Israel had agreed to brief, staggered pauses in its military invasion of Gaza to allow health officials to make a frantic drive to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of children and avert a deadly polio outbreak.
The strike near the hospital, in the city of Deir al-Balah, killed four people and wounded a number of others, including women and children, according to Wafa news agency.
Witnesses said the bomb landed among some of the makeshift shelters on the hospital grounds that were being used by people who had fled their homes. Video showed tents and shelters in ruins, their wooden beams flattened, and people’s belongings strewed outside the hospital, one of Gaza’s largest.
At least three Palestinians were killed and many others wounded in Israeli shelling targeting the vicinity of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza.
An Israeli airstrike in Gaza City targeted a group of people near a school in the Zeitoun neighborhood. According to the Wafa news agency and local reports, the air raid killed at least three Palestinians and injured many others.
The health ministry in Gaza said on Thursday that at least 40,878 Palestinian people have been martyred in the Israeli war, now nearing its 12th month.
The toll includes 17 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to ministry figures, which also list 94,454 people as wounded in the Gaza Strip since the Israeli war on Gaza began.
In the West Bank, Israeli forces launched new deadly aerial and ground raids on the ninth day of their invasion.
MA/Press TV
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