Geneva, August 11 (RHC)-- The UN special rapporteur on Palestine says Israel is committing genocide in the besieged Gaza Strip using “U.S. and European weapons,” hours after the Israeli massacre in a school-turned-shelter in the war-torn Palestinian territory.
Israel bombed the al-Tabi’in school in the al-Daraj neighborhood east of Gaza City, leaving more than a hundred people dead and many more injured, early in the morning. The genocidal crime has drawn global condemnation.
Later in the day, Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, strongly condemned the appalling massacre, describing Gaza as “the largest and most shameful concentration camp of the 21st century.”
“Israel is genociding the Palestinians one neighborhood at the time, one hospital at the time, one school at the time, one refugee camp at the time, one 'safe zone' at the time, with US and European weapons, and amid the indifference of all “civilized nations.” May the Palestinians forgive us for our collective inability to protect them, honoring the most basic meaning of international law,” she said on X.
Israel bombed the al-Tabi’in school as the citizens were performing the dawn prayer. Local media reports, citing witness accounts, said there were about 250 people inside the prayer hall at the school when it was struck by Israeli bombs while displaced people were performing the dawn prayer.
Eyewitness accounts suggest many of the dead and injured are women, children and the elderly.
Separately, the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, called for an end to the “horrors unfolding under our watch”, referring to the school massacre. “We cannot let the unbearable become a new norm. The more recurrent, the more we lose our collective humanity,” he said on X, reiterating his call for a “ceasefire now.”
UNRWA is the primary source of humanitarian aid not only to Gaza but also to Palestinian refugees throughout the region. Still, several countries say they will resume funding UNRWA. Back in March, Albanese had stressed in a report that there were “reasonable grounds” to determine that Israel had committed several acts of “genocide” in its brutal war on Gaza.
Israel unleashed its brutal war on Gaza on October 7th last year after Hamas carried out a historic operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
Nearly 40,000 Palestinians have since been killed, most of them women and children, and upwards of 91,000 others injured in the merciless Israeli aggression. More than 1.7 million people have been internally displaced as well.
The Tel Aviv regime has also imposed a “complete siege” on the territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.
