The U.N. relief agency for Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip said its employees were among 18 people killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school. Israel said the school was being used by Hamas.
The United Nations relief agency for Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip says Israeli airstrikes hit a school that was sheltering families in central Gaza, killing six of its employees.
The U.N. agency, UNRWA, says this is the fifth time the al-Jaouni school has been hit since the start of the war. It says that some 12,000 people — mostly women and children — are taking shelter there and the manager of the UNWRA team helping people was killed in Wednesday’s strike.
First responders say 18 people died in the attack that caused the roof of a shelter to cave in. Families were left scrambling to find their loved ones amid the wreckage.
“No one is safe in Gaza,” the agency said in a statement. “No one is spared.”
António Guterres, the U.N. Secretary General, called the strikes “dramatic violations of international humanitarian law. »
“What’s happening in Gaza is totally unacceptable,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
The Israeli military said Hamas was using the school as a “command and control center. »
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, responded to Guterres’ criticism by writing on X: “It is unconscionable that the UN continues to condemn Israel in its just war against terrorists, while Hamas continues to use women and children as human shields.”
UNWRA called on all parties in the conflict to “never use schools or the areas around them for military or fighting purposes” and said that “schools and other civilian infrastructure must be protected at all times.
