12/09/24
Six UN workers killed in Israeli strike on school in Gaza, says official
Six United Nations workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinian families, according to an official.
The strike on the UN’s al-Jaouni Preparatory Boys School in the Nuseirat refugee camp killed at least 14 people, including two children and a woman, officials from Awda and al-Aqsa Martyrs hospitals said. At least 18 other people were wounded, they said.
The Israeli military said it was targeting Hamas militants planning attacks from inside the school. The claim could not be independently confirmed.
One of the children killed was the daughter of Momin Selmi, a member of Gaza’s civil defence agency, which rescues wounded and retrieves bodies after strikes, the agency said.
Gaza’s schools are packed with tens of thousands of Palestinians driven from their homes by Israeli offensives and evacuation orders. The al-Jaouni school, one of many in Gaza run by the UN agency for Palestinians, or UNWRA, has been hit by multiple strikes during the war.
UNRWA said six staffers aiding the displaced, including the manager of the shelter, were killed. “Humanitarian staff, premises & operations have been blatantly & unabatedly disregarded since the beginning of the war,” the agency’s director, Philippe Lazzarini, wrote on X.
Israel has bombed a number of schools, saying they are being used by Hamas militants. It blames Hamas for civilian casualties from its strikes, saying its fighters base themselves and operate within dense residential neighborhoods.
More than 90 per cent 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.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed at least 41,084 Palestinians and wounded another 95,029, the territory’s Health Ministry said. The ministry’s count does not differentiate between civilians and militants. Israel launched its campaign vowing to destroy Hamas after the October 7 attack on southern Israel in which militants killed some 1,200 people and abducted 250 others.
Earlier Wednesday, a strike hit a home near the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, killing 11 people, including six brothers and sisters ranging from 21 months to 21 years old, according to the European Hospital, which received the casualties.
A strike late Tuesday on a home in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza killed nine people, including six women and children, according to the Health Ministry and the civil defence. The civil defence said the home belonged to Akram al-Najjar, a professor at the al-Quds Open University, who survived.
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