GAZA’S death toll from Israel’s 14-month attack has topped 45,000 people, health officials said today, as a United Nations-run school housing displaced people was targeted.

Israeli forces bombed the UNRWA-run Ahmed bin Aziz School in southern Khan Younis on Sunday evening, killing at least 20 people, including six children.

UNRWA spokeswoman Louise Wateridge said she had met children injured in the strike, which included a 17-year-old girl who suffered a severe leg injury and shrapnel wounds.

She survived along with her twin sister and three other sisters, Ms Wateridge said, but their mother died.

Ms Wateridge said one of the sisters described “how their mother’s bones were crushed under the rubble,” saying: “There was nothing they could do to save her.”

She also met with two siblings aged two and five at Nasser Hospital where the casualties were taken.

Both children have severe head and body injuries, with two-year-old Julia losing sight in her eye.

“There is nothing we can do. We are already waiting for the next attack,” Ms Wateridge quoted a doctor as telling her.

The Israeli military said that it had “conducted a precise strike on Hamas terrorists who were operating inside a command and control centre embedded within a compound” that had served as a school in Khan Younis.

It did not provide evidence.

The attack followed the targeting of a school in northern Beit Hanoon that killed 43 people and another on a civil defence site that killed Al-Jazeera journalist Ahmed al-Louh and five rescue workers.

Ms Louh’s procession funeral was carried to a hospital with his blue bulletproof vest resting on top of his body.

Also on Sunday, a family of four were among those killed in an overnight strike on a house in Gaza City.

Rescuers recovered the bodies of 10 people from under the rubble, including those of two parents and their two children.

Israel has considerably increased attacks on the al-Mawasi region near Khan Younis, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.

The area had been designated by the Israeli military as a “humanitarian zone.”

Gaza’s Health Ministry said that 45,028 people have been killed since October 7 2023, in the besieged strip and 106,962 have been injured.

It said that the real toll could be significantly higher as thousands of bodies remain buried under rubble or in areas that medics cannot access.