Palestinians recover a victim from inside the Latin Patriarchate Holy Family School after it was hit during Israeli military bombardment, in Gaza City on July 7, 2024. (Photo by AFP)
Gaza City, July 9 (RHC)-- Israeli forces have targeted another UN-run school in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, causing numerous casualties, as the genocidal war in the Gaza Strip enters its tenth month.
The school run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), which provides refuge to a large number of displaced people, was struck on Tuesday morning.
Palestinian medical sources said that 15 civilians were injured in the Israeli bombardment of a primary school in the Nuseirat refugee camp at midnight. Israeli forces confirmed that its warplanes had attacked “a school complex,” alleging that the UNRWA-run school was used by Hamas fighters as a command center.
Meanwhile, 16 Palestinian were reported killed after Israeli fighter jets hit several areas across Gaza, Wafa news agency reported.
At least seven people were killed after Israeli aircraft bombed the Freih family home in the Nuseirat refugee camp, according to Palestinian media outlets. Many others were injured and some people were still missing, feared under the rubble.
Six others were killed in a house on Jalaa Street near al-Ghafri Junction, in northern Gaza City. An infant was rescued alive from under the rubble there. Three others were killed in the Lababidi area of northern Gaza City.
Israeli artillery also struck areas near al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and the western part of Rafah City.
The Tuesday strike on the UNRWA school is the latest on a UN facility in Gaza, where more than 450 buildings operated by the world body have come under attack since October.
In a post on X, UNRWA condemned any hits on UN facilities as "shocking" and a "blatant disregard for international humanitarian law." "Any hits on @UN facilities are shocking and there has been a blatant disregard for international humanitarian law in regard to this conflict," @UNRWA @JulietteTouma to @AFP @FRANCE24
The UNRWA’s Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini said in a post on X on Sunday that since the war began, more than half (or 190) of UNRWA facilities have been bombed, some multiple times, some directly, and as a result, 520 people have been killed and nearly 1,600 injured while seeking some safety, including too many children and women.
On Saturday, Israel's attack on a UNRWA school in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza resulted in the deaths of at least 16 Palestinians seeking shelter, leaving many more injured and trapped under the rubble.
Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, in a statement, condemned the “horrific massacre,” dismissing as “pure lies and deception” Israel's claim that resistance fighters had been present in the building.
Hamas’s statement lamented that shelters, schools, and UNRWA facilities have been systematically targeted and destroyed, resulting in the killings of hundreds of displaced individuals, including children, women, and the elderly.
The mass displacement comes as the war has uprooted 90 percent of Gaza's population, destroyed much of its housing and other infrastructure, and left almost 500,000 people enduring "catastrophic" hunger, UN agencies say.
The latest massacres by Israeli forces have raised the number of Palestinians killed so far to over 38,193 with nearly 88,000 others injured.
