UN chief condemns Israeli strike on Gaza school

UNITED NATIONS: United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned on Thursday an Israeli air strike on a UN school in the Gaza Strip, where some 6,000 displaced people were sheltering, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.

Israel hit a Gaza school on Thursday with what it described as a targeted airstrike on up to 30 Hamas fighters inside, and a Hamas official said 40 people were killed including women and children sheltering at the UN site.

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Video footage showed Palestinians hauling away bodies and scores of injured in a local hospital after the attack, which took place at a sensitive moment in mediated talks on a ceasefire that would involve releasing hostages held by Hamas and some of the Palestinians held in Israeli jails.

At the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah Palestinian boy Imad al-Maqadmeh lay on the floor, his swollen face badly bruised and bleeding. He said he lost his father in the strike.

“What did we do? There are no armed people in the school. The ones there are children, playing. We play together… Why did they bomb us?” he said in the video obtained by Reuters.

In images of the dead laid out at the hospital surrounded by wailing mourners, bodies were mostly wrapped in shrouds or carpets, making it impossible to determine from the video if they included non-combatants.

The United States issued a joint statement with other countries calling on Israel and Hamas to make whatever compromises were necessary to finalise a deal after eight months of war in the Gaza Strip.

Ismail Al-Thawabta, the director of the Hamas-run government media office, rejected Israel’s assertion that the UN school in Nuseirat, in central Gaza, had hidden a Hamas command post.

“The occupation uses … false fabricated stories to justify the brutal crime it conducted against dozens of displaced people,” Thawabta told Reuters.

Israel’s military said its fighter jets had carried out a “precise strike”, and circulated satellite photos highlighting two parts of a building where it said the fighters were based.

“We’re very confident in the intelligence,” military spokesperson Lt Col Peter Lerner said, accusing Hamas of deliberately using UN facilities as operational bases.

He said 20-30 fighters were located in the compound, and many of them had been killed. “I’m not aware of any civilian casualties and I’d be very, very cautious of accepting anything that Hamas puts out,” he said.

Later Israel’s chief military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the military had so far identified nine of 30 Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters targeted in the pre-dawn strike.

Washington said it expected Israel to be fully transparent in making information about the strike public.

As people at the school cleared rubble from bloodstained classrooms, survivor Huda Abu Dhaher described waking up to the sound of rockets.

“People’s remains were scattered inside the yard and outside. The gas canister exploded,” she told Reuters.

“My nephew was martyred (killed), he lost his leg and arm, he was a 10-year-old.”

The school, run by the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA), was sheltering 6,000 displaced people at the time, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said.

“At least 35 people were killed and many more injured,” he wrote on X. “Claims that armed groups may have been inside the shelter are shocking. We are however unable to verify these claims. Attacking, targeting or using UN buildings for military purposes are a blatant disregard of International Humanitarian law.”

Thawabta and a medical source said 40 had been killed, including 14 children and nine women.

The United Nations condemned the “horrific, tragic” attack.

“It’s just another horrific example of the price that civilians are paying, that Palestinian men, women and children who are just trying to survive, who are being forced to move around in sort of a death circle around Gaza, trying to find safety, are paying,” said spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

The building was once used as a school, but with no schools now operating in Gaza it was being used as a shelter, he added.

The bombing took place in a central part of Gaza where Israel announced a new military campaign on Wednesday as it battles fighters relying on hit-and-run insurgency tactics. It says there will be no halt to fighting during ceasefire talks, which have intensified since U.S. President Joe Biden outlined a proposal for a truce on Friday.

Hamas seeks a permanent end to the war. Israel says it must destroy the group first.

In another sensitive development, the Israeli military reported a rare attack near the Israel-Gaza border, saying a squad of Palestinian fighters killed a soldier and three of them were killed in return fire.

A statement by the Hamas armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, said its fighters had conducted an operation behind enemy lines in the Rafah area of southern Gaza, corresponding to the location in the Israeli military’s account.

CIA director William Burns met senior officials from mediators Qatar and Egypt on Wednesday in Doha to discuss the ceasefire plan. Two Egyptian security sources said talks continued on Thursday but had shown no sign of breakthrough.

All ceasefire efforts have failed since a single week-long truce in November.

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Israel’s military assault on Gaza has killed more than 36,000 people, according to health officials in the territory, who say thousands more dead are feared buried under the rubble.

US and Israeli officials have told Reuters about half of Hamas’s forces have been killed in the conflict. Hamas does not disclose fatalities among its fighters and some officials say Israel exaggerated the figures. Israel’s own military death toll is almost 300.