At least 18 people were killed and dozens injured when Israel’s armed forces launched an airstrike on an Islamic mosque in the early hours of the morning, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

Earlier, workers in the first aid services had spoken of five dead and 20 injured.

The victims include children, according to the agency.

The bombing of the mosque, near Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Bala, the central part of the Gaza Strip, came on the eve of the anniversary of the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Eyewitnesses earlier pointed out that the number of victims might increase a lot, as the Islamic mosque was turned into a reception center for internally displaced persons.

The Israeli military confirmed the bombing of the place of worship.

In a statement, it said it “conducted a precision strike against Hamas terrorists operating inside a command and control center embedded in a structure that was previously the ‘Suhada al-Aqsa’ mosque in the Deir al-Bala area.”

The war between Israel and Hamas, part of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was sparked when members of the Palestinian Islamist movement’s military wing launched an unprecedented raid in southern Israeli territory on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and injuring more about 250 hostages, according to a Reuters count based on official Israeli data.

Israel’s wide-ranging military operations have since killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled enclave. Almost all of the Gaza Strip’s roughly 2.3 million people are suffering from a severe food crisis, and Israel is facing genocide charges at the International Court of Justice, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government rejects.