At least 500 killed in Gaza hospital strike

An Israeli air strike yesterday killed at least 500 Palestinians at a Gaza City hospital crammed with patients and displaced people.

Health authorities in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip said an Israeli air strike caused the blast while Israel's military attributed it to a failed rocket launch by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group.

The health ministry spokesman, Ashraf Al-Qudra, said early on Wednesday that hundreds were killed and rescue workers were still removing bodies from the rubble. In the first hours after the blast, a Gaza civil defence chief said 300 people were killed, while health ministry sources put the figure at 500.

Reuters could not independently verify who was responsible for the blast or how many people were killed.

Before Tuesday's blast, health authorities in Gaza said at least 3,000 people had died in Israel's 11-day bombardment that began after a Hamas Oct. 7 rampage on southern Israeli communities in which 1,300 people were killed and around 200 were taken into Gaza as hostages.

Gaza, a 45 km-long (25-mile) enclave home to 2.3 million people, has been ruled since 2006 by Hamas, an Islamist group that is a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization._Agencies.