GAZA STRIP // At least 15 people were killed and more than 200 wounded in an attack at a United Nations school in northern Gaza that was providing shelter to Palestinians who had fled Israeli bombardments.
Gaza officials said Israeli tank shells struck the facility in Beit Hanoun, which witnesses said was covered in pools blood.
“Circumstances are still unclear. I strongly condemn this act,” the UN chief Ban Ki-moon said. “Many have been killed – including women and children, as well as UN staff.”
Relatives of those killed and wounded said the school was struck multiple times as they were waiting in a hallway for buses to shuttle them to another facility because of danger from fighting in the area, including Israeli shelling and airstrikes.
“There are appalling scenes of unimaginable human suffering, with multiple deaths and injuries” said Christopher Gunness, spokesman for the UN’s Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which helps Palestinian refugees.
Thursday’s attack was the latest in a number of alleged Israeli strikes on schools and hospitals in the Gaza Strip, as the Palestinian death toll from a 17-day operation to halt rocket fire by Gaza militants passed 770, with more than 4,000 others wounded. At least 32 Israeli soldiers have been killed.
While not directly accusing it of carrying out the attack, Mr Gunness said Israel did not respond to multiple UNRWA requests before the attack to coordinate the evacuation of the roughly 1,500 people at the school.
The school was the fourth UN facility to be hit in fighting between Israel and Hamas that erupted on July 8.
“We tried calling for most of the day,” Mr Gunness said, adding that the UN agency had given the Israeli army the precise coordinates of the school.
He said on Twitter that a cache of militant rockets had been found at a UN school, but did not say where or when. Hamas and other militant groups have hidden caches of rockets at schools on at least two other occasions during this war, UN officials have said.
Israel’s military said it would investigate the incident, suggesting that an errant rocket fired at Israel by Palestinian militants could have struck the UN school.
Gaza’s health ministry spokesman, Ashraf Al Qedra, slammed Israel for attacking the facility, accusing it of violating international law by attacking civilians and UN property.
“These people were not fighters – they were civilians, and this was a direct challenge to the UN and international norms.”
At least 20 of those wounded in the attack were taken to Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, where at least two of them died.
The attack broke the right leg of Siraj Mousleh, 10, who lay on a bed in the emergency room.
“We were at the school when the buses came for us and then the Jews attacked. My leg is broken; it’s injured,” she said.
Her mother, Intisar Mousleh, 40, was severely wounded in the head and was in critical condition, doctors said.
Relatives of those wounded in the attack said they saw at least three strikes on the UN school.
They described scenes of confusion moments before, with officials telling them that they would have to board buses to another UN school in the nearby refugee camp of Jabalia.
Witnesses said 13 members of the Shenbari family were killed in the attack. Speaking at Shifa Hospital, Ahmed Shenbari, 43, said his wife and son were badly wounded and being treated at the facility.
“They attacked us more than once. How could Israel not know this was a UN facility? They have the greatest military technology in the world, but they couldn’t see the blue flag!” he said.
Ali Shenbari, 31, a relative who was tending to wounded family members, said he saw three Israeli shells hit the facility.
“They hit us with the tank shells. They hit us three times!”
In Cairo, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, sought to further regional efforts to broker an end to the bloodshed, reaching out to Turkey and Qatar, both allies of Hamas.
Mr Kerry is seeking to garner support for an Egyptian-drafted ceasefire proposal, with an official saying he had spoken to his counterparts in Doha and Ankara in hopes they would use encourage Hamas to accept it.
Hamas has so far rejected all ceasefire efforts, with its exiled leader Khaled Meshaal vowing on Wednesday there would be no end to the fighting without an end to Israel’s SEVEN-year blockade on Gaza.
Meanwhile, a Jordanian helicopter flew Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas from Ramallah to Amman for urgent talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, the presidency said.
hnaylor@thenational.ae
* With additional reporting by Agence France-Presse and Reuters