Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Rafah in the Gaza Strip, said that dozens of men taken from UN-affiliated schools in northern Gaza on Thursday were rounded up under “heavy gunfire” with snipers also positioned around the school.

“Those men were ordered to leave the school and then they were blindfolded. They were stripped of their clothes, and there were signs of beatings and torture as we’ve seen in one of the videos and the pictures circulating,” he said.

Footage aired by Israeli media showed at least 100 Palestinian men sitting in their underwear on the street in Jabalia before being taken to an unknown location. Among the men were doctors, academics, journalists and elderly, according to the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.