Views: 12
Palestinian aid agency UNRWA reports 6 employees killed in bombing at Al-Jawni School; IDF says Hamas was using site for attacks, adds it took steps to reduce civilian casualties.
The United Nations on Wednesday night condemned an Israeli strike on a school in Gaza that rescuers said killed 18 people, including UN staffers, and called for the global body’s sites to be protected “by all parties.”
Israel’s military said it hit a Hamas control center located inside the Al-Jawni school in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip. Though inactive amid the war, it has been used as a shelter by displaced Palestinians.
According to the IDF, Hamas was using the school to plan and carry out attacks against troops and Israel. The IDF said it carried out “many steps” to mitigate harm to civilians in the strike, including using precision munitions, aerial surveillance, and other intelligence.
In a statement, the UN said that the Nuseirat school had been “deconflicted.”
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters that it was the fifth airstrike on the same school since the start of the Gaza war.
“We condemn all airstrikes that target civilians and those that also target UN facilities,” Dujarric said.
“Our policy is clear. UN premises should never be targeted, nor should UN premises be used by any groups or any force from which to launch military activities,” he said. “UN premises need to be protected. UN premises need to be respected, and that is by all parties to any conflict.”
The UN’s Palestinian aid agency UNRWA said six of its staffers had been killed in two Israeli air raids on the Nuseirat school and its surroundings, calling it the highest death toll among its team in a single incident.
“Among those killed was the manager of the UNRWA shelter and other team members providing assistance to displaced people,” the UN agency posted on X.
“Schools and other civilian infrastructure must be protected at all times, they are not a target.”
Under international law, protected civilian infrastructure loses that status if used for military activities.
UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini said after the school strike that at least 220 members of the agency’s staff have been killed in Gaza throughout the war. Israel says Gaza terror groups regularly and systematically operate from within such sites, using civilians as human shields with the express purpose of increasing civilian casualties during the war.
“Endless & senseless killing, day after day,” Lazzarini posted on X. “Humanitarian staff, premises & operations have been blatantly & unabatedly disregarded since the beginning of the war.”
UN chief Antonio Guterres called what is happening in Gaza “totally unacceptable.”
In response, Israel’s ambassador to the UN accused Guterres of distorting reality.
“It is unconscionable that the UN continues to condemn Israel in its just war against terrorists, while Hamas continues to use women and children as human shields,” Danny Danon wrote on social media.
“The solution,” he added, “is not a ceasefire, but the release of all hostages still held in Gaza and the elimination of Hamas.”
After the war was sparked by the Hamas terror group’s massacre in southern Israel on October 7, which killed some 1,200 people, Israel named the return of the 251 hostages abducted that day as one of its military goals, along with dismantling Hamas. Ninety-seven of the hostages abducted that day are still held in Gaza, some of them known to be dead.
The latest strike on the Al-Jawni school Wednesday flattened part of the facility, leaving only a charred heap of rebar and concrete.
“For the fifth time, Israeli forces bombed the UNRWA-run Al-Jawni School, killing 18 citizens, including two UNRWA staff members, children, and women, and injuring more than 18 others,” Gaza’s Hamas-run Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmud Bassal posted on Telegram. Hamas figures cannot be verified and the terror group does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.
Across the Strip, many school buildings have been repurposed to shelter displaced families as the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been repeatedly uprooted by the war.
Israeli forces have struck several sites located within schools in recent months that they say were used by Palestinian terrorists.
Survivors of the strike scrambled to retrieve bodies and belongings from the rubble, telling AFP they had to step over “shredded limbs.”
“I can hardly stand up,” said one man, holding a plastic bag of human remains.
“We’ve been going through hell for 340 days now. What we’ve seen over these days, we haven’t even seen it in Hollywood movies; now we’re seeing it in Gaza.”
More than 90 percent of Gaza’s school buildings have been severely or partially damaged in strikes, and more than half the schools housing displaced people have been hit, according to a survey in July by the Education Cluster, a collection of aid groups led by UNICEF and Save the Children.
The Nuseirat strike came a day after at least 19 Palestinians were reported killed as the Israeli military said it struck three senior Hamas operatives at a command room embedded within an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone in the southern Gaza Strip.
Hamas’s Civil Defense and government media office initially claimed that 40 people were killed in the strike, a toll that Israel disputed. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry later brought the casualty number down to 19 and said more than 60 others were wounded.
Gaza has repeatedly been called the world’s deadliest place for humanitarian workers, with aid organizations repeatedly faulting the “deconfliction” process — the coordination of movements with military parties.
Months of behind-the-scenes negotiations mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States have so far failed to secure a truce and hostage release.
A Hamas delegation met Qatari and Egyptian mediators in Doha on Wednesday, the terror group said in a statement. Recent rounds of mediation held in Doha and Cairo have tried to hash out a framework laid out in May by US President Joe Biden, but both Israel and Hamas have publicly signaled deeper entrenchment in their negotiating positions.
TIMES OF ISRAEL