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GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — An Israeli air strike on Wednesday hit a central Gaza school, with the Hamas-run territory's civil defence agency reporting 14 killed in the facility-turned-displacement shelter and the military saying it had targeted militants.

The vast majority of the Gaza Strip's 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once by the war, triggered by Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel, with many seeking safety in school buildings.

Israeli forces have struck several such schools in recent months, saying Palestinian militants were operating there and hiding among displaced civilians, charges denied by Hamas.

The Al Jawni school in central Gaza's Nuseirat, already hit several times during the war, was struck again on Wednesday, civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

"The number of martyrs has risen to 14," he said, updating an earlier toll of 10 killed in the "Israeli bombing of Al Jawni school" which also wounded numerous people.

AFP was unable to independently verify the toll, which the spokesman said included several women and children.

A medical source at Nuseirat's Al Awda health centre in central Gaza told AFP that 15 people killed in the strike had been brought to hospitals in the area.

Nine were brought to Al Awda, and six to Al Aqsa Martyrs's Hospital, in the central Gaza city of Deir Al Balah.

AFP journalists witnessed several unconscious men and women brought to Al Aqsa hospital on stretchers, or in the arms of medics in the case of children.

"Most of the people took refuge in schools and the schools were bombed and the martyrs were mostly children and women," Basil Amarneh, a local, said at the hospital.

"Where will people go?"

The Israeli military said its air force had "conducted a precise strike on terrorists who were operating inside a Hamas command-and-control centre" on the school grounds, without elaborating on its outcome or the identities of those targeted.

The Hamas government media office said about 5,000 displaced people were sheltering at the school, which used to be run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, when it was hit on Wednesday.

Al Jawni has been hit at least five times in more than 11 months of war, Bassal said.

In July, at least 16 people were killed in an Israeli air strike on the school that the military said had targeted "terrorists".

Israel's military offensive since the October 7 attack has killed at least 41,084 people in Gaza, according to the territory's health ministry. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.

The Hamas attack on southern Israel that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, which also includes hostages killed in captivity.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — An Israeli strike Tuesday on eastern Lebanon killed a Hizbollah commander, a source close to the group and the Israeli military said, the latest in near-daily exchanges throughout the Gaza war.

The Iran-backed Lebanese group has traded fire with Israeli forces in support of ally Hamas since the Palestinian fighters group's October 7 attack triggered war in the Gaza Strip, with repeated escalations during more than 11 months of the cross-border violence.

A source close to Hizbollah told AFP that Mohammad Qassem al-Shaer, "a field commander" in the group's elite Radwan Force, "was targeted in an Israeli strike on a motorcycle in the Bekaa" Valley in Lebanon's east, far from the Israeli border.

Hizbollah earlier announced Shaer had been killed by Israeli fire, but did not refer to him as a commander.

The Israeli military said its air force had "eliminated the terrorist Mohammad Qassem al-Shaer in the area of Qaraoun", in the Bekaa Valley.

It referred to Shaer as "a Hizbollah Radwan Force commander".

Elsewhere in Lebanon, the health ministry said an "Israeli enemy" strike on a building in the southern city of Nabatiyeh "caused light injuries to nine people".

GENEVA — The third phase of a giant polio vaccination drive targeting children in Gaza began Tuesday in a particularly war-ravaged zone, but the WHO said a support convoy had to abort its mission.

After the first confirmed polio case in 25 years, a massive vaccination effort began last week targeting over 640,000 children under 10, aided by localised "humanitarian pauses" in fighting.

After covering central and southern Gaza, the campaign moved into its final phase in the north from Tuesday until Thursday, said World Health Organization spokesman Tarik Jasarevic.

Maher Shamiya, the deputy health minister in the Gaza Strip, told AFP that 230 teams were working to provide the vaccines and that there had already been "significant turnout of families eager to vaccinate their children".

"I came to protect my children from polio," Samah Yahya, a 38-year-old mother of two from Gaza City, told AFP.

"I heard that the vaccine is safe, and thank God, the children received it."

Disease has spread with Gaza lying in ruins and the majority of its 2.4 million residents forced to flee their homes due to Israel's military assault — often taking refuge in cramped and unsanitary conditions.

A fresh campaign to provide a needed second dose is due to begin in about four weeks in Gaza, besieged for over 11 months.

Ahead of the roll-out of the third phase, "vaccines, cold chain equipment and finger markers were delivered to north Gaza yesterday," Jasarevic said.

However, "a WHO mission carrying fuel for hospitals and vehicles for the polio campaign as well as campaign monitoring experts was impeded", he said.

It had taken three hours for that mission to get a green light from the Israelis to move, "followed by five hours at the holding point, after which the mission had to be aborted", he explained.

'Sustained access' needed 

WHO also voiced concern that some areas in the north facing Israeli evacuation orders are part of the areas where humanitarian pauses had been agreed to allow the vaccination to go ahead.

"We appeal to all parties to continue ensuring these humanitarian pause zones are respected during the campaign," Jasarevic said.

He said a separate WHO mission to reach Gaza's largest hospital, Al-Shifa, in the north was also "impeded" on Monday.

That marked the fourth time in as many days that WHO was unable to reach the hospital.

"We call for safe and sustained access to the north and for a functional de-confliction system, which still remains a challenge 11 months into the war," Jasarevic said.

He said the number of denied requests for access to the north had "doubled in August compared to previous months".

UN spokesman Jens Laerke told reporters that out of 208 UN attempts to access northern Gaza in August, only 74 successfully made their scheduled aid deliveries.

"Forty-four were impeded, which means they were blocked or delayed on the ground, resulting in some of them being aborted", while 72 were "flatly denied", he said, adding that the remainder were withdrawn by the UN due to logistical, operational or security reasons.

PORT SUDAN, Sudan — Sudan has rejected a call by UN experts for the deployment of an "independent and impartial force" to protect millions of civilians driven from their homes by more than a year of war.

The conflict since April last year, pitting the army against paramilitary forces, has killed tens of thousands of people and triggered one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

The independent UN experts said Friday their fact-finding mission had uncovered "harrowing" violations by both sides, "which may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity".

It called for "an independent and impartial force with a mandate to safeguard civilians" to be deployed "without delay".

The Sudanese foreign ministry, which is loyal to the army under General Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, said in a statement late Saturday that "the Sudanese government rejects in their entirety the recommendations of the UN mission."

It called the UN Human Rights Council, which created the fact-finding mission last year, "a political and illegal body", and the panel's recommendations "a flagrant violation of their mandate".

The UN experts said eight million civilians have been displaced and another two million people have fled to neighbouring countries. 

More than 25 million people -- upwards of half the country's population -- face acute food shortages.

The Sudanese foreign ministry statement accused the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, led by Burhan's former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, of "systematically targeting civilians and civilian institutions".

"The protection of civilians remains an absolute priority for the Sudanese government," it said.

The statement added that the UN Human Rights Council's role should be "to support the national process, rather than seek to impose a different exterior mechanism".

It also rejected the experts' call for an arms embargo.