Gaza crisis: UN claims Israel did not allow evacuation from shelter before strikes - as it happened

As a terrible picture develops at the UNRWA shelter in Beit Hanoun reportedly struck today by Israeli tank shells, the Israeli military tweets that 'rockets launched from Gaza' landed in the area:

A Washington Post correspondent on the scene at the Beit Hanoun UNRWA facility:

Speculation in Cairo that a Gaza ceasefire could take effect by the weekend, in time for the Eid al-Fitr festival next Monday or Tuesday, is not echoed in Washington and Israel, Reuters reports, citing an unnamed US official and Israeli cabinet minister Gilad Erdan:

But a U.S. official described any truce by the weekend as unlikely, as did an Israeli security cabinet minister who said the army would need one to two weeks to complete its main mission of razing tunnels used by Hamas for cross-border raids.

"If the talk is of a humanitarian hiatus for - this is not pleasant to say - removing bodies, all kinds of things that are connected to the civilian population in the short-term, this might be weighed," the minister, Gilad Erdan, told Israel Radio.

"But I will oppose any ceasefire until it is clear both that the tunnels will be destroyed and what will happen in the post-ceasefire period - how we will guarantee that quiet for the residents of Israel will really be preserved in the long-term."

Here's a map locating the UN shelter compound hit today (map via the Guardian's Paddy Allen):

Chris Gunness, the UN Relief and Works Agency spokesman, tweets that the UN had sought and failed to gain from the Israeli army a window for safe passage of civilians from the Beit Hanoun shelter:

Reuters has more grim details from the scene of the Beit Hanoun compound housing a UN school hit by Israeli tank shells:

A Reuters photographer at the scene said pools of blood had collected on the ground and on student desks in the courtyard of the school near the apparent impact mark of the shell.

Scores of crying families who had been living in the school ran with their children to the hospital where the victims were being treated a few hundred meters away.

Laila Al-Shinbari, a woman who was at school when it was shelled, told Reuters families had gathered in the courtyard expecting to be evacuated shortly in a Red Cross convoy.

"All of us sat in one place when suddenly four shells landed on our heads ... Bodies were on the ground, (there was) blood and screams. My son is dead and all my relatives are wounded including my other kids," she wept.

Chris Gunness, spokesman for the main U.N. agency in Gaza UNRWA, confirmed the strike and criticised Israel:

"Precise co-ordinates of the UNRWA shelter in Beit Hanoun had been formally given to the Israeli army ... Over the course of the day UNRWA tried to coordinate with the Israeli Army a window for civilians to leave and it was never granted," Gunness said on his Twitter page.

Six members of the same family and an 18-month-old infant boy were killed when an Israeli airstrike hit the Jebaliya refugee camp in the early morning hours, according to Gaza police and health officials, the AP reports:

Twenty others were injured in the strike, they said, and rescuers were digging through the rubble of flattened homes, looking for survivors.

An airstrike on a home in the southern Gaza town of Abassan killed five members of another family, said Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra. Abassan is near Khan Younis, in an area that saw intense fighting on Wednesday.

The Associated Press has published a longer dispatch from the compound housing a UN school hit, the AP reports, by Israeli tanks shells:

Israeli tank shells hit a compound housing a U.N. school in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing at least 15 people and wounding dozens who were seeking shelter from fierce clashes on the streets outside.

Pools of blood soiled the school courtyard, amid scattered books and belongings. There was a large scorch mark in the courtyard marking the place where one of the tank shells hit.

The strike occurred during a day of heavy fighting throughout the coastal territory as Israel pressed ahead with its operation to halt rocket fire from Gaza and destroy a sophisticated network of cross-border tunnels. [...]

UNRWA, the Palestinian refugee agency, has said it has found militant rockets inside two vacant schools.

At least 15 were killed in the Israeli strike on a compound housing a U.N. school in the northern Gaza Strip, according to Gaza health officials, the AP reports:

Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra says the 15 were among hundreds of people seeking shelter in the school in Beit Hanoun from heavy fighting in the area. At least 150 people were injured.

Thursday's strike is the fourth time a U.N. facility has been hit in fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, which is ruled by the Islamic militant group Hamas. But it's the first time casualties have been reported.

A CNN correspondent tweets: