Israeli Airstrike Hits School Shelter in Gaza

An Israeli airstrike hit a school sheltering displaced people, killing at least 11 Palestinians in Gaza City civil defense authorities said.

Sledgehammers were used to try and break through concrete during the search operation to rescue those trapped at the Safad School in al-Zeitoun, a suburb of Gaza City.

Gaza's civil defense spokesman Mahmoud Basal said that the strike hit the western wing of the school where people were sheltering after being displaced during the war.

Israel and Hamas have agreed to brief pauses in their 11-month war to allow a United Nations polio vaccination drive in Gaza.

But Israeli forces continued to battle Hamas-led militants in several areas across the Palestinian enclave. Residents said Israeli army troops blew up several houses in Rafah, near the border with Egypt, while tanks continued to operate in Zeitoun.

Israeli security forces surrounded a house in Hebron and killed a Palestinian suspected of carrying out a shooting in the Idna Tarqumiya Junction, the military said.

Three Israeli police officers were killed when their vehicle came under fire at the Junction, near the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, Israeli officials said, adding to days of violence in the Palestinian territory.

After more than an hour of shooting at the house and throwing grenades the soldiers finally entered the building. Palestinians watching the shooting shouted at the Israeli forces when they walked out of the building carrying the body of the suspected Palestinian from the house.

The soldiers then fired in the direction of the Palestinians watching from afar who ran to take cover.

Hundreds of Israeli troops have been carrying out raids across the West Bank since last Wednesday in one of their largest actions in the area in months, which Israel says is aimed at rooting out Islamist militants.

At least 40,738 Palestinians have been killed and 94,154 injured in Israel's military offensive in Gaza, the enclave's health ministry says.