Two Israeli bombs hit the Al Jaouni school on Wednesday, run by the United Nations, which houses some 12,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, displaced by the war in the Nuseirat refugee camp (central Gaza), according to the UN. It is the fifth time that the occupation troops have attacked these facilities. The provisional death toll is 18, including six employees of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), according to the agency. This makes the bombing the deadliest for workers of this agency of all those carried out by Israel since the conflict began on October 7, as confirmed to EL PAÍS by one of its spokesmen. With these six deaths, among whom is the director of the school, there are now 220 employees of the UNRWA who have lost their lives in these 11 long months.
Following the latest attack, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini has referred to the “endless and senseless killings, day after day”, while recalling that the “killed” workers were providing “support to families who had sought refuge in the school”. “Humanitarian staff, facilities and operations have been flagrantly and relentlessly ignored since the beginning of the war”, Lazzarini denounced through his profile on the social network X (formerly Twitter), where he again called for a ceasefire agreement to be reached. There is not a single safe place for the population of Gaza, he recalled, noting that Israel’s bombings violate international humanitarian law. “The more impunity prevails, the more irrelevant international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions will become”, he insisted.
Israel has acknowledged the bombing but says it is not a school but a Hamas command center, and also questions whether the six UN employees were among the victims, suggesting they may be “terrorists,” according to Avichay Adraee, an army spokesman. The bombs hit what he calls “a Hamas command and control complex inside what was formerly used as the Al Jaouni School,” according to a statement on X.
The head of European diplomacy, the Spaniard Josep Borrell, has expressed his “outrage” at the attack and has stated that “the disregard for the basic principles of international humanitarian law (…) cannot and should not be accepted by the international community,” according to a post on his profile on that social network. Borrell is currently on a tour of the Middle East that does not include Israel or Palestine among its stops after the Israeli government refused to receive him.
Knowing what’s happening outside means understanding what’s going to happen inside, so don’t miss anything.
KEEP READING
“The carnage in Gaza must end. Ceasefire,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, a UN agency, in a message of condolence for the latest deaths published on X, in which he also noted that “hospitals, schools and shelters have been repeatedly bombed, resulting in the deaths of civilians and humanitarian workers.” In the last day alone, the death toll in the Strip has risen to 96, bringing the total number during the conflict to 41,118, according to Hamas government health authorities.
On Tuesday, Israel bombed the al-Mawasi camp near the city of Khan Yunis (south of Gaza), killing at least 19 people. Israel named three Hamas officials who, according to its account, were the target of the attack. A few hours earlier, the UN had denounced that one of its convoys intended to vaccinate the population of Gaza against polio had been blocked for eight hours “at gunpoint” by the occupation troops.
It is a warning that the UN constantly repeats: whenever such attacks occur, they remind us that “schools and other civilian infrastructure must be protected at all times; they are not a target.” But the reality, despite everything, indicates that they continue to target them. “We call on all parties to the conflict to never use schools or the areas surrounding them for military or combat purposes,” they add in a statement on X. Israel defends this type of bombing because, according to its information, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups are camouflaged among the civilian population.
Harassment campaign against UNRWA
Since the beginning of the war, the Israeli authorities have launched a campaign of harassment, discrediting and accusing UNRWA employees. In particular, the Jewish State accused 12 of the agency’s 33,000 employees (13,000 in Gaza and 3,700 in the West Bank) of being involved in the massacre of 1,200 Israelis organized by Hamas on October 7, when the war began. This led 16 countries, including the main donors, to cancel the delivery of up to 400 million euros, which put the institution on the verge of a blockade in the middle of an Israeli military operation in Gaza, when it needed the most funds.
In addition to the 220 deaths of UNRWA employees since the start of the war – some of them following Israeli attacks on vehicles and sites identified as UN convoys or facilities – there have been accusations of terrorism in international bodies and attacks on facilities even in Jerusalem openly instigated by staff of the city council.
The agency had to close its offices in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem in May due to an arson attack and the violence suffered by Israeli citizens months before. “There is no place for the enemy in our holy city,” said the city’s deputy mayor, Arieh King, on his profile on the social network X. King is accused by the UN itself of being the instigator of the attacks and threats, sometimes involving firearms.
More than 3,000 UNRWA employees have been left homeless in the Gaza Strip by Israeli army attacks, according to the organization. In addition to Gaza, harassment and persecution of workers is taking place in the West Bank, driven by the Israeli government authorities and the occupation troops, together with radical Jewish settlers, according to a complaint made last March by the head of UNRWA in the West Bank, Adam Bouloukos.
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees was established at the same time as the State of Israel in 1948 to protect and care for victims and displaced persons of war. Since then, it has been the main institution responsible for this on the ground and remains deployed, in addition to Palestine (East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza), in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.
Follow all the international information at Facebook and Xor in our weekly newsletter.
#Israel #kills #UNRWA #employees #Gaza #worst #attack #war