Gaza City, Gaza - Young children wandered through the charred shell of what had been a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza on Thursday, after a pre-dawn Israeli strike killed 12 people there, according to the civil defense agency.

Tattered clothes hung from the blackened exterior of the building in western Gaza City, as rubble still smoldered below in the morning light.

Bloodstains dotted the ground strewn with the remnants of daily life. Clothing, metal chairs, tins of food, and part of an electric fan lay amongst the wreckage, AFP footage showed.

"This is not a life," said Umm Yassin Abu Awda, a Gaza City resident who stood amongst mourners at the city's Al-Shifa Hospital following the strike.

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"Either you strike us with a nuclear bomb and end it all, or people's conscience needs to finally wake up."

Nearly all of Gaza's population has been displaced at least once during the nearly 21-month assault, which has created dire humanitarian conditions for the more than two million people living there.

Many have sought shelter in school buildings, but these have repeatedly come under Israeli attacks.

Mohammad al-Mughayyir, an official from Gaza's civil defense agency, told AFP that most of the 12 killed in Thursday's strike were women and children. He also reported a large number of injuries in the "Israeli air strike on the Mustafa Hafez School, which shelters displaced persons, in the Al-Rimal neighborhood."

They were among 25 people that the agency reported killed by Israeli forces on Thursday morning in the Palestinian territory.

At Mustafa Hafez School, a colorful mural on a wall next to the wreckage showed a smiling boy walking past a tree and a woman next to a Palestinian flag.

A small group sat on chairs in what was once the playground of the school.

Inside the building, a group of young boys surveyed the damage and climbed on upturned furniture while others sifted through the debris.

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Crowds of mourners gathered at Al-Shifa Hospital, where men and women wept over the bodies of the dead.

"We have no life left. Let them just annihilate us so we can finally rest," said one woman who lost relatives in the strike and did not give her name.

"There's nothing left for us. My two daughters are gone – and now my niece, along with her six children and her husband, were burned to death," she said, her voice breaking with emotion.

Israel has slaughtered at least 57,130 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023, according to the territory's health ministry, though the true number of dead is believed to be far higher.