Six UN staff were among 14 people killed in an Israeli airstrike on a central Gaza school sheltering displaced Palestinians, the Palestinian refugee agency said.
Wednesday’s attack on its al-Jaouni Preparatory Boys School in the Nuseirat refugee camp was the deadliest ever for its staff, Unrwa, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, said.
The UN school, housing about 12,000 displaced people, mostly women and children, has been attacked at least five times since Israel launched an air and ground offensive in Gaza last October, Unrwa said.
“Among those killed was the manager of the Unrwa shelter and other team members providing assistance to displaced people,” the agency said. At least 18 people sustained injuries in the airstrike, according to officials from Awda and al-Aqsa Martyrs hospitals.
The Israeli military claimed its strike targeted a Hamas command and control centre in Nuseirat.
Some 90 per cent of Gaza’s schools have been severely or partially damaged by Israeli attacks and over half of the schools housing displaced people have been struck, according to a survey by the Education Cluster in July.
“Humanitarian staff, premises and operations have been blatantly and unabatedly disregarded since the start of the war,” Unrwa director Philippe Lazzarini said.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians so far, according to local health officials. It has also displaced nearly 90 per cent of the territory’s 2.2 million population and left around half a million facing starvation, according to the UN.
Israel’s latest assault on the long-besieged territory came after Hamas launched a raid in southern Israel last October during which around 1,200 people were killed.
The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in August that 280 aid workers were killed in 33 countries in 2023, and this year “may be on track for an even deadlier outcome”. It added that more than half of last year’s deaths occurred in the first three months of the Israeli war on Gaza.
In another attack on Wednesday, a suspected Israeli attack on a home near the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, killed 11 people, including six brothers and sisters aged 21 months to 21 years.
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers allegedly conducted raids in several towns backed by airstrikes, killing at least eight people. One airstrike killed five people the military said were militants threatening its troops. A second strike on a car killed at least three people, Gaza’s health ministry said.