Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli forces killed at least 69 people on Thursday, including 15 in a strike on a school sheltering Palestinians displaced by the war nearing its 22nd month.

Israel has recently expanded its military operations in the Gaza Strip, where its war on Hamas militants has created dire humanitarian conditions and displaced nearly all of the territory's population of more than two million.

Many have sought shelter in school buildings, but these have repeatedly come under Israeli attacks that the military often says target Hamas militants hiding among civilians.

In an updated toll on Thursday afternoon, civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that 69 people were killed by Israeli strikes, artillery or gunfire across the territory.

They included 38 people waiting for humanitarian aid at three separate locations in central and southern Gaza and a child killed by a drone in Jabalia in the north.

Bassal said 15 people, "the majority of them children and women", were killed and several others wounded in an Israeli air strike on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City.

Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military (IDF) said regarding that incident that it........

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