Truemors
The strike on Tuesday hit a school run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, in the northern town of Jabaliya.
Medical sources at two Gaza hospitals said two tank shells exploded outside the school, spraying shrapnel on people inside and outside the building, where hundreds of Palestinians had sought refuge from the Israeli attacks.
The toll quickly rose as rescuers struggled through the rubble.
In addition to the dead, several dozen people were wounded, the officials said.
Doctors said all the dead were either people sheltering in the school or residents of Jabalya refugee camp, in the north of the Gaza Strip.
John Ging, director of operations in Gaza for Unrwa, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, said three artillery shells landed near the school where 350 people were taking shelter.
Ging said Unrwa regularly provided the Israeli army with exact geographical coordinates of its facilities and the school was in a built-up area.
"Of course it was entirely inevitable if artillery shells landed in that area there would be a high number of casualties," he said.
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at 10:30 on January 6th, 2009
Israel's deadliest offensive against the Gaza Strip that claimed the lives of more than 580 lives, including nearly 100 children, as "savagery."
"What reason can justify such savagery?" Erdogan wondered in a speech to his Justice and Development Party in parliament, slamming Israeli attacks on civilian targets.
The Turkish official noted that the offensive was a bid by the Israeli leadership to score points ahead of the general elections scheduled in February.
Erdogan called on Israeli Defense and Foreign Affairs ministers Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni "to forget about the elections, because history will judge them for the black stain they are leaving on humanity."
The Zionist entity "has suffered much in history and should know best the sanctity of human life, especially that of women and children... and the importance of the culture of co-existence," he said, insisting that the Israeli response was disproportionate.