Those killed in the incident in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah included citizens of Poland, Australia and Britain, as well as one Palestinian, a spokesman for the media office said.

“We are aware of reports that members of the World Central Kitchen team have been killed in an IDF attack while working to support our humanitarian food delivery efforts in Gaza,” WCK posted on X.

“This is a tragedy. Humanitarian aid workers and civilians should NEVER be a target. EVER.”

Commenting on the reports, the Israeli military said it was conducting a thorough review at the highest levels to understand the circumstances of this “tragic” incident.

“The IDF makes extensive efforts to enable the safe delivery of humanitarian aid, and has been working closely with WCK in their vital efforts to provide food and humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza,” the military statement said.

The WCK delivers food relief and prepares meals for people in need. It said last month it had served more than 42 million meals in Gaza over 175 days.

Earlier Israeli forces withdrew from Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City after a two-week operation by special forces who detained hundreds of suspected Palestinian militants and left a wasteland of destroyed buildings.

With access to Gaza’s biggest hospital severely restricted, the Israeli and Palestinian versions differed sharply.

Palestinian officials called the raid on a hospital treating severely wounded patients a war crime, while Israeli officials said special forces units conducted a targeted strike against a Hamas stronghold deliberately located among vulnerable civilians.

Thousands of Palestinians – 6200 according to the Israeli military – had been sheltering in the complex, one of few locations in the north of Gaza with some access to electricity and water.

Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run Gaza media office, said Israeli forces had killed 400 Palestinians in and around the hospital including a woman doctor and her son, also a doctor, and put the facility out of action.

“They bulldozed the courtyards, burying dozens of bodies of martyrs in the rubble, turning the place into a mass graveyard,” he said. “This is a crime against humanity.”

Hamas and medics deny any armed presence in hospitals but Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the site had been turned into a major operating centre by the Palestinian armed groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

He said emergency patients had been evacuated from the hospital before the operation and said no Palestinian civilians, patients or medical personnel had been harmed by Israeli forces.

He said three of the main buildings in the complex had been destroyed in the fighting – the main emergency room, the maternity ward and an annexe known as the Qatari Building – after Hamas fighters refused calls to surrender.

“They’re using those places, they know it’s a safe haven, they know that they use it intentionally as their command and control centre,” he told reporters on Monday.

He said 200 militants and two Israeli servicemen had been killed during the operation and more than 900 suspected militants detained, of whom some 500 were identified as Hamas or Islamic Jihad, including senior commanders and officials.

He said documents recovered by Israeli forces showed the hospital was used as a base to control the northern section of the Gaza Strip, which has largely been destroyed since the start of the ground invasion in October.

As well as weapons and computers equipment, cash worth more than $US3 million ($A4.6 million) was also recovered, he said.

“It was a significant operation in terms of the blow that Hamas and Islamic Jihad suffered,” Hagari said.

Hamas said Israel detained 350 people from inside Shifa, including patients and displaced people and dozens of others from districts nearby.

Footage on social media, unverified by Reuters, showed corpses, some covered in dirty blankets, scattered around the charred hulk of the hospital, many of whose outer walls were missing. It showed ground heavily ploughed up, and numerous buildings outside the facility flattened or burned down.

It was the second major Israeli incursion into Al Shifa Hospital after an earlier operation in November.

More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed, including 63 in the past 24 hours, in Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, according to the Palestinian health authorities.

In the October 7 attack, Hamas killed 1200 people and took 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. The military has published the names of 257 soldiers killed in Gaza combat.