Israeli forces have bombed another school-turned-shelter in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 18 people, including six staff members of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
Witnesses said Wednesday’s attack on al-Jaouni school in the Nuseirat refugee camp tore women and children to pieces, while UNRWA said the casualties among its staff amounted to the “highest death toll” in a single incident in the 11-month war.
Some 12,000 displaced Palestinians, most of them women and children, were sheltering at al-Jaouni, according to UNRWA, when Israeli forces carried out two air attacks on the building.
The manager of the UN-run shelter was among those killed.
UNRWA said Wednesday’s attacks marked the fifth time the school has been hit since Israel’s war on Gaza began last October.
“No one is safe in Gaza. No one is spared,” it said in a post on X.
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from the site of the attack, said there was a “tremendous amount of destruction” at the school while the smell of blood permeated the air.
“We can see huge holes in the wall, and we can see people are looking for anything they can salvage after the destruction of this UN-run shelter,” he said. “The scale of destruction is unprecedented and … piles of rubble and dirt are covering this entire area.”
Abu Azzoum said the school was “hit at a time when people were waiting for food” and that emergency workers were “digging the rubble with their bare hands due to the lack of basic equipment”.
‘Women, children blown to pieces’
One Palestinian woman who survived the attack said she had lost all of her six children.
“Are these children terrorists? May God punish them. The Israelis destroyed our home; killed and starved our people; women are widowed and children orphaned,” the unidentified woman told Al Jazeera in a video testimony.
“Six children … What crime, what wrong did those innocent children do?”
Another survivor said the section of the school that was hit had been “dedicated only to women”.
“All of a sudden there was a huge explosion … Women and children were blown to pieces. We rushed to see our children but found them torn to pieces,” he told Al Jazeera in a video testimony.
“This is the fifth time – the fifth time – the school building has been pounded by Israeli warplanes. It is supposed to be a safe sheltering area,” he added.
The Israeli military confirmed carrying out the attack but said it had targeted a Hamas command and control centre. Without providing evidence, it said the compound was used to plan and carry out attacks against Israeli forces in Gaza and against Israel.
Al-Jaouni is at least the sixth school to be targeted by Israeli shelling or air raids since August 1. Tens of thousands of Palestinians driven from their homes by Israeli offensives and evacuation orders are sheltering in Gaza’s schools.
On August 1, at least 15 people were killed in an Israeli attack on the Dalal al-Mughrabi school in Gaza City, while on August 3, another 16 were killed in the bombing of the Hamama school, also in Gaza City.
On August 4, at least 30 people were killed in Israeli air raids on the Nassr and Hassan Salama schools, west of Gaza City, while on August 8, at least 17 were killed in attacks on Abdul Fattah Hamouda and az-Zahra schools, which are also located in Gaza City.
And on August 10, more than 100 people were killed and 150 others wounded after Israeli forces bombed al-Tabin school, east of Gaza City.
‘Carnage in Gaza must stop’
As funerals were held on Thursday for the victims of the school strike, Qatar and Jordan were among several countries that condemned the attack, as did UN agencies and international rights groups.
Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the attack a “horrific massacre” and called for an independent UN investigation.
“Endless and senseless killing, day after day,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said.
“Humanitarian staff, premises and operations have been blatantly and unabatedly disregarded since the beginning of the war.”
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, said “the carnage in Gaza must stop”.
“No words can reflect the true horror and loss of life in Gaza,” he wrote on X. “Hospitals, schools and shelters have been repeatedly bombarded, resulting in deaths of civilians and humanitarians.”
William Deere, director of UNRWA’s Washington Office, told Al Jazeera that Israeli forces have targeted a total of 190 UN-run facilities in the course of the war, “many of them more than once”. That’s despite the agency sharing their GPS coordinates with the Israeli military.
The death of six staff members takes the number of UNRWA employees killed in Gaza to 220 “which is the highest ever in United Nations history”, Deere said.
But, “our staff are on the front lines, and they’re not going to back down, they’re not going to stop doing their job”, he added.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres denounced the lack of accountability for the killings of humanitarian workers in Gaza and called for effective investigations into their deaths.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, said he was “outraged” by the killing of the UNRWA staff, adding that the disregard for the basic principles of international humanitarian law, especially the protection of civilians, cannot and should not be accepted by the global community.
Israel has been “testing the limits of what is acceptable” to the international community and escalating violence accordingly in Gaza, said Abdullah Al-Arian, assistant professor of history at Georgetown University in Qatar.
“This is exactly how genocidal campaigns unfold,” he told Al Jazeera.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health said on Thursday that Israel’s 11-month-old assault on Gaza has now killed at least 41,118 people and wounded 95,125 others.
