Gaza death toll reaches 11,000

Fighting raged in Gaza on Thursday nearly five weeks after Hamas's shock October 7 attack triggered a furious response from Israel aimed at destroying the Islamist militant group.

About 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in Israel in the attack, according to Israeli officials.

In Gaza, upwards of 11,000 people, also mostly civilians, have been killed in the war, the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory has said.

Here are five key developments from the past 24 hours:

Israel revises down death toll

Israel revised down the death toll from last month's Hamas attacks in southern Israel from 1,400 to about 1,200, according to a foreign ministry spokesman.

"This is an updated estimate," ministry spokesman Lior Haiat told AFP.

A deadly strike hit Gaza's largest hospital compound, the facility's director and local authorities said.

Gaza's Hamas government reported a toll of 13 dead, while Al-Shifa hospital director Mohammad Abu Salmiya blamed Israeli forces for the strike at the facility sheltering people from the fighting.

An AFP journalist saw at least seven covered bodies outside the hospital.

An Israeli military spokesperson said Thursday evening the army was operating near Al-Shifa, in western Gaza City.

The World Health Organization warned that the health system in Gaza is "on its knees" amid the fighting, pointing to "hospital corridors crammed with the injured, the sick, the dying", as well as "tens of thousands of displaced people sheltering".

Around 50 people were killed in strikes that hit a Gaza City school and their bodies were taken to the Al-Shifa hospital, the facility's director said separately.

"About 50 martyrs were recovered from inside Al-Buraq school... after missile and artillery strikes that targeted the school this morning," said Salmiya.

AFP was unable to immediately verify the reported death toll.

UN agency victims top 100

The head of the United Nations agency supporting Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said more than 100 of its staff had been killed in the war in Gaza.

"Devastated. Over 100 UNRWA colleagues confirmed killed in one month. Parents, teachers, nurses, doctors, support staff," UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini said on social media.

The "carnage" in Gaza had to stop, Lazzarini wrote in a media opinion piece published earlier on Friday.

Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler denounced the conduct of Israeli forces fighting Hamas in Gaza, in his first public comments on the Israel-Hamas war.

"We condemn the military aggression witnessed in the Gaza Strip, the targeting of civilians, and the continued violations of international humanitarian law by the Israeli occupation forces," Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told a summit with African leaders.