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ISRAELI forces have attacked five separate schools in Gaza in just eight days, killing dozens of people sheltering in them, according to Palestinian officials, medics and rescuers.
The latest attack on Sunday struck the United Nations-run Abu Oreiban school in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing at least 17 people and injuring about 80.
The assault came after a deadlier strike hit tents near the entrance to Khan Younis’s al-Awda school on July 9th, killing at least 29 people.
Two days before that, another strike on the church-run Holy Family school in Gaza City killed four people.
The bloodshed in Gaza’s schools-turned-shelters, which Israel accuses Hamas of fortifying, has been a recurring scene throughout the war.
Israel has repeatedly attacked civilian buildings after accusing Palestinian fighters of using them for military purposes but it has provided no proof for its claims.
On Saturday, Israel struck the al-Mawasi area, designated as a safe zone, killing at least 90 people and injuring 300 others.
‘Massacres every day everywhere in Gaza,’ said Palestinian Ambassador to the UK Husam Zomlot after the latest school attack. ‘This is the result of Israel’s impunity, and international inaction.’
Since launching the war on October 7th, Israel has hammered more than 400 schools in Gaza, which are among the few places displaced Palestinians can turn to for shelter, destroying 88 per cent of all educational facilities.
With the enclave’s education system decimated, there is little hope of enrollment for some 620,000 school-age Palestinians who are out of school.
Tamara al-Rifai, UNRWA’s head of external relations, says the past week has been one of the deadliest since the war started last October.
Her comments came after the head of the United Nations organisation announced its headquarters in Gaza City had been ‘flattened’.
‘The images coming out of the UNRWA headquarters are really shocking. What I saw today is unrecognisable,’ she said. ‘It speaks volumes for the blatant disregard for international humanitarian law.’
Al-Rifai noted 190 UNRWA facilities – ‘most of which served as shelters for displaced people’ – have been attacked during the war, killing more than 500 and wounding 1,600.
A commission of inquiry is needed to investigate the attacks on UNRWA facilities and the ‘killing of its staff’, she added.
the head of the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees also reported yesterday that its Gaza headquarters had been levelled during heavy fighting.
‘The headquarters in Gaza were turned into a battlefield and are now flattened. Another episode in the blatant disregard of international humanitarian law.’ said Philippe Lazzarini.
‘United Nations facilities must be protected at all times. They must never be used for military or fighting purposes. Shocking,’ he added.
The Islamic Relief charity condemned ‘the brutal killing and wounding of hundreds of civilians’ in Gaza over the last few days.
‘The government of Israel is proving to the world over and over again – this time in the designated safe area of al-Mawasi, and yesterday in a school housing civilians in Nuseirat – that it’s willing to kill innocent men, women and children in pursuit of its end goals,’ it said in a statement.
‘It’s a terrifying precedent for a nation state to set… The siege and killing in Gaza must end.’
The international charity demanded an end to civilian casualties and ‘aid to be allowed to flow back into the enclave in the quantities needed to halt spreading famine.’
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