By Liam Stack
Condemnation of a deadly Israeli strike on a school turned shelter in the central Gaza Strip mounted Thursday as Israel said that the complex crowded with people driven from their homes had become a headquarters for militants.
The site, once known as Al-Jaouni School, had been home to around 12,000 displaced people from the Gaza Strip, mainly women and children, according to the United Nations, which operated the school. Israel has struck the compound five separate times since the war began last October, it said.
Palestinian authorities said the Israeli strike Wednesday killed 18 Palestinians. Among them were six U.N. employees, including the shelter’s manager, the most U.N. employees to die in a single strike in Gaza since the war began, the organization said.
Britain’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, on Thursday joined in criticism from the United Nations and others, called the deaths of the U.N. workers “appalling” and reiterated calls for a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel. The government of Qatar, a key mediator in talks over a cease-fire, called the strike a “horrifying massacre.”
The Israeli military continued to defend the strike, saying the compound in Nuseirat was being used as a Hamas “command and control center,” a claim it has repeatedly made in an effort to justify increasingly frequent strikes on schools serving as shelters.
The U.N. human rights agency’s office for Palestinian affairs said the strike “emphasizes the Israeli military’s systematic failure to comply with international humanitarian law.” For a fighting force like Hamas to hide among civilians, using them as human shields, “would amount to a war crime,” the office said, but “does not negate Israeli forces’ obligations.”
Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesperson for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, called for an independent and thorough investigation, adding that “the continued lack of effective protection for civilians in Gaza is unconscionable.”
Israel issued a list of nine names of people it said were Hamas militants who had been killed in the strike, including three that it said were employees of UNRWA, the U.N. agency that aids Palestinians. UNRWA could not be immediately reached for comment on the claim.
Earlier, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, a spokesperson for the Israeli military, said that the military had asked the United Nations for the identities of the six employees it said were killed so Israel could “thoroughly review the claim” that they were U.N. workers but that the organization had so far not provided them.
Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for UNRWA, the main U.N. agency working in Gaza, said that it was “not aware of any such request,” adding that it shares a list of its staff members in Gaza and the occupied West Bank with Israel every year.
She added that UNRWA was “not in a position to determine” whether Al-Jaouni School had been used for military or fighting purposes.
“This is precisely why we have repeatedly called for independent investigations to look into these very serious claims,” she said.
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