Gaza’s civil defence agency has said Israeli strikes across the Palestinian territory yesterday killed at least 40 people, including several children, an Al Jazeera TV cameraman and three rescuers, AFP reports.

AFP images showed distraught relatives mourning the bodies of loved ones at a hospital in Gaza City. Some corpses lay on the floor covered in blankets.

Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that an Israeli strike on a school used as shelter by displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza’s main city killed at least 12 people, including a number of children.

“One missile hit the third floor of the school” in Khan Younis, also injuring 35 people, Bassal said. Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military said it was looking into the report. Another strike on a house in Shujaiya, east of Gaza City, killed six people, according to the civil defence spokesman.

Bassal earlier told AFP that rescuers working through the night recovered the bodies of 18 people, including three children. He also reported more dead in a strike on a house in central Gaza City and another that hit a tent sheltering dozens of displaced people in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.