The Civil Defense in Gaza announced on Thursday that at least 17 people were killed and dozens were injured in an Israeli airstrike on a school in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, while the Israeli army claimed that it targeted Hamas militants.

Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Basal said, "The Israeli occupation targeted the Martyrs School in the Nuseirat area, and the initial toll is 17 martyrs and dozens of wounded, some of whom are in critical condition."

Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat confirmed the number of martyrs as a result of the occupation's bombing.

For its part, the Israeli army claimed that it targeted Hamas militants in the raid on the school.

"The Israeli Air Force carried out a strike on Hamas 'terrorists' who were operating inside a command and control centre in the Nuseirat area located inside the school," he added in a statement.

He continued, "The command and control center.

"Used to plan and carry out attacks against IDF forces and the State of Israel."

Umm Mohammed, who survived the raid, said she was sitting in one of the rows before stones and glass started falling on her head.

She added, "I hugged my little girl, I didn't see anything because of the density of the smoke and I ran screaming for my sister and found her downstairs alive."

She added that she saw "children, body parts, smoke and fire."

Yahya Abu Kamil, who was displaced from Gaza City to the Nuseirat camp, said, “This is a shelter center. We have been living here for about a year and there are no armed men there... Here are civilians displaced from Gaza.”

In a statement, Hamas said the Israeli raid on the school represented "the Zionist enemy's persistence in committing horrific massacres against defenceless civilians in shelters and displacement centres."

The government media office stated that "the occupation army knew that the school contained thousands of displaced people, and that the majority of them were children and women who had been displaced from their homes and whose civilian residential neighborhoods had been bombed."

In recent months, Israeli forces have targeted several schools in the Gaza Strip after they became displacement centers, but the army always claims that it is targeting Hamas fighters.