GAZA: The civil defense agency in Gaza has said that around fifteen people have been killed in a strike on a school sheltering war displaced people.
The attack on the UN-run Abu Araban site in central Gaza’s Nuseirat camp was the 5th on a school-turned-shelter in last eight days. The Abu Araban school was housing thousands of displaced persons civil defense agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal said. AFP cited Mahmud Bassal as saying that most of the dead were children and women.
Schools in Nuseirat were also the target for two of the earlier school attacks as Israel keeps up its operation against Hamas.
The Israeli military also admitted that its air force carried out a strike in the area of UNRWA’s Abu Araban school compound in Nuseirat.
AFP images showed the three-story building standing, with clothes and bedding airing out over its railings. A wall bearing the UN logo had been destroyed, and rooms inside were destroyed.
On July 6, Israeli warplanes hit Al-Jawni school, also run by the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), in Nuseirat. UNRWA stated around 2,000 people were sheltering there at the time.
The following day, around four people passed away in a strike on the church-run Holy Family school in Gaza City, in the territory’s north, the Civil Defense agency said. On Monday, Israel also hit another Nuseirat school in the Gaza Strip.
The next day, a hospital source stated that around 29 people passed away in a strike at the entrance to Al-Awda school in the Khan Yunis area, southern Gaza.
Israel claims Hamas uses hospitals, schools, and other public infrastructure for military purposes. However, Hamas rejects the accusation. Germany and France on Wednesday called for a probe into the school attacks.
After the Al-Jawni strike, UNRWA spokesperson Juliette Touma told AFP that when the war began “we closed the schools and they became shelters.”
UNRWA is the main relief agency in Gaza but more than half, or 190, of its facilities have been hit — “some more than once” — in the military response to the October 7 Hamas attacks, she said.
