Gaza City, Gaza - Rescuers said devastating Israeli strikes in Gaza killed at least 52 people on Monday, 33 of them – including over a dozen children – in a school turned shelter.

Gaza civil defence agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal said that an early-morning Israeli strike on the Fahmi Al-Jarjawi school, where displaced people were sheltering, killed "at least 33, with dozens of injured, mostly children, including several women."

The Gaza Media Office later said 18 of the victims were children.

Footage shared on social media showed Palestinian firefighters battling a blazing inferno in which the figure of a small child is visible, trying to escape the flames. Per the Quds News Network, she was rescued alive.

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In a rote response used to justify every bombing carried out over 19 months of a campaign described by many experts as genocidal, Israel called the school a "command and control center" for Palestinian militants, offering no evidence for its claims.

A separate strike killed at least 19 people "after the warplanes targeted the Abd Rabbo family's home early this morning in the town of Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip," Mahmud Bassal said.

In addition to the mass killing, Israel has been subjecting Gaza's entire population to a campaign of starvation, blocking all aid until last week, when growing international pressure forced it to reluctantly allow a trickle of food trucks to enter the territory.

Aid groups have stressed that the amount is nowhere near enough to meet the needs of over 2 million people besieged for more than a year and a half, many of whom are at risk of imminent death.