REUTERS, Gaza

Israeli air strikes hit three Gaza hospitals and a school yesterday, killing at least 22 people, and a ground battle was under way at another hospital, Palestinian officials said, as Israel’s forces took on Hamas in the heart of the enclave.

Officials said missiles landed in the courtyard of Gaza’s biggest hospital, Al-Shifa, in the early hours, damaged the Indonesian Hospital and reportedly set fire to the Nasser Rantissi paediatric cancer hospital.

The hospitals are in northern Gaza, where Israel says the Hamas fighters who attacked it last month are concentrated, and are full of displaced people as well as patients and doctors. Israel says Hamas is using them as human shields, which the group denies.

Israeli tanks, which have been advancing through northern Gaza for almost two weeks, have taken up positions around the Nasser Rantissi, Children’s and Eye hospitals as well as the Al-Quds hospital, medical staff said ealier, raising the alarm.

“Israel is now launching a war on Gaza City hospitals,” Mohammad Abu Selmeyah, director of Shifa hospital, which was struck by a missiles early on Friday, told Reuters.

Gaza health ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra said Israel had bombed Shifa hospital buildings five times. “One Palestinian was killed and several were wounded in the early morning attack,” he said by phone. Videos verified by Reuters showed scenes of panic and people covered in blood.

Selmeyah said later that at least 20 people were killed in Israeli strikes on Al-Buraq school in Gaza City, where people whose homes had been destroyed were sheltering.

The Palestinian Red Cross said Israeli forces were shooting at Al-Quds hospital, and there were violent clashes, with one person killed and 28 wounded, most of them children.

Israel did not immediately comment on the reports. It says it does not aim its attacks at civilians and tries to protect them, but that Hamas fighters have hidden command centres and tunnels beneath Shifa and other hospitals.

“While the world sees neighbourhoods with schools, hospitals, scout groups, children’s playgrounds and mosques, Hamas sees an opportunity to exploit,” the Israeli military said. Hamas says such statements are untrue.

With Palestinian officials reporting more than 10,000 dead, Israel has faced growing calls for restraint in its month-old war on Hamas but says the fighters, whose Oct. 7 attack made all Israelis fear for their lives, would exploit a ceasefire.

The Israeli military said it struck more than 15,000 “terror targets” in the Gaza Strip and located 6,000 weapons since the beginning of the war.