A deadly Israeli strike on a school turned shelter in northern Gaza on Saturday exposed an agonizing dilemma for civilians in Gaza seeking safety after 10 months of war.

They could stay at the schools turned shelters, hoping for a modicum of security in the desperate conditions of Gaza. Or they can flee, knowing that the shelters themselves can become targets.

The school year has been abandoned in Gaza, and tens of thousands of civilians have flocked to the compounds since the earliest days of the war, trying to build temporary lives in classrooms and corridors, or pitching makeshift tents in schoolyards.

Conditions are atrocious, residents have said, but the schools, which offer walls and access to limited plumbing, are attractive for the simple reason that the alternatives are worse. Israel’s airstrikes and ground assaults continue around the territory. Extreme hunger is widespread. And diseases are spreading fast in squalid, crowded camps and the ruins of former homes.

As a result, schools have been preferable options for many because they have offered the promise of better security in a conflict that has killed nearly 40,000 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

Ahmed Tahseen Abd Shabat, a 25-year-old who had been living at the Hafsa government school in Gaza City with his two brothers and parents, told The New York Times by phone that they arrived there as a last resort after fleeing 10 times since Oct. 7, when Hamas led a deadly attack on Israel that began the conflict.