The United Nations Palestinian refugee agency Unrwa said six staffers were killed after two air strikes hit a school in central Gaza on Wednesday, marking what it said was the highest death toll among its staff in a single incident.
“Among those killed was the manager of the Unrwa shelter and other team members providing assistance to displaced people,” Unrwa said on X.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Israeli army said in a statement that it conducted a strike on a command and control centre in Nuseirat in central Gaza, which it said was operated by Palestinian militant faction Hamas.
“This school has been hit five times since the war began. It is home to around 12,000 displaced people, mainly women and children,” Unrwa added.
The Hamas-run government media office said the Israeli strike killed at least 18 people, including the Unrwa staff members.
UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday that a lack of accountability for the killing of United Nations staff and humanitarian aid workers in Gaza was “totally unacceptable”.
Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin also condemned the Israeli air strike.
“Humanitarian workers take exceptional risks to provide vital food and aid supplies to people. There is an obligation to protect them,” he said.
The Israeli military says it takes steps to reduce the risk of harm to civilians and that at least a third of the Palestinian fatalities in Gaza are militants. It accuses Hamas of using Palestinian civilians as human shields, which Hamas denies.
The war was triggered on October 7th when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to the enclave’s health ministry.
The latest Israeli strike came on Wednesday afternoon, targeting the UN’s Al-Jaouni Preparatory Boys School in central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp.
One of the children killed was the daughter of Momin Selmi, a member of Gaza’s civil defence agency, which works rescuing wounded people after strikes.
Mr Selmi had not seen his daughter for 10 months since he remained in north Gaza to keep working while his family fled south, the Gazan agency said.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians driven from their homes by Israeli offensives and evacuation orders are living in Gaza’s schools. The al-Jaouni school, one of many in Gaza run by Unwra has been hit by multiple strikes over the course of the war.
More than 90 per cent of Gaza’s school buildings have been severely or partially damaged in strikes, and more than half the schools housing displaced people have been hit, according to a survey in July by the Education Cluster, a collection of aid groups led by Unicef and Save the Children.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, an Israeli strike killed five people in the northern town of Tubas, the Palestinian health ministry said. The military said it was targeting a group of militants. The ministry did not specify whether the dead were militants or civilians.
Israel has stepped up its military raids across the West Bank, saying it is working to dismantle militant groups and prevent attacks. Palestinians say such operations are aimed at cementing Israel’s seemingly open-ended military rule over the territory.
In a separate incident in the city of Tulkarm, the military said troops backed by police and intelligence services killed an armed militant.
Earlier on Wednesday, a strike hit a home near the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, killing 11 people, including six brothers and sisters from the same family ranging in age from 21 months to 21-years-old, according to the European Hospital, which received the casualties.
A strike late on Tuesday on a home in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza killed nine people, including six women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry. The civil defence said the home belonged to Akram al-Najjar, a professor at the al-Quds Open University, who survived the strike.
The Israeli military said two soldiers died and seven were injured when their helicopter crashed in the southern Gaza Strip as they evacuated wounded troops.
It said the overnight crash was not the result of enemy fire and is under investigation. There have been 340 Israeli soldiers killed since the ground operation began in Gaza in late October, at least 50 of whom died in accidents, according to the military.
Meanwhile, US president Joe Biden says he is “outraged and deeply saddened” by the death of an American activist who was shot by Israeli forces while protesting against settlements in the occupied West Bank, calling it “totally unacceptable”.
“There must be full accountability,” Mr Biden said in a statement released early on Wednesday. “And Israel must do more to ensure that incidents like this never happen again.”
The Israeli military said on Tuesday that Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old activist from Seattle who also had Turkish citizenship, was likely shot “indirectly and unintentionally” by its soldiers, and that it had launched a criminal investigation.
That drew a strong rebuke from her family members, who said in a statement that they were “deeply offended by the suggestion that her killing by a trained sniper was in any way unintentional”. – Reuters/AP