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Israeli Shells Said to Hit School in Gaza, Killing at Least 15 Israeli Shells Said to Hit School in Gaza, Killing at Least 20
(about 4 hours later)
GAZA CITY — Israeli artillery fire hit a United Nations-run school serving as a shelter in northern Gaza early Wednesday, killing at least 15 Palestinians taking refuge there, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. JABALIYA, Gaza Strip — The strikes came in rapid succession. At around 5 a.m. Wednesday at a United Nations school at the Jabaliya refugee camp, where, 3,300 Palestinians had taken refuge from the fierce fighting in their Gaza neighborhoods, what appeared to be four Israeli artillery shells hit the compound.
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said Wednesday morning he was looking into what struck the school. One hit the street in front of the entrance, according to several witnesses. Two others hit classrooms where people were sleeping.
Witnesses said at least two shells landed at Abu Hussein school, located in the middle of the Jabaliya refugee camp, around 4:30 a.m., hitting the stairway and a classroom. Palestinian health officials said at least 20 people were killed by what witnesses and United Nations officials said was the latest in a series of strikes on United Nations facilities that are supposed to be safe zones in the 23-day-old battle against Hamas and other militants.
Jabaliya, the most densely populated area in the Gaza Strip, has come under artillery fire since Tuesday afternoon. The shelling has killed at least 50 people there in the past 24 hours, according to the ministry. “My house was burned and death followed us here,” said Ahmed Mousa, 50, who was in the school courtyard when the shells hit. “Where am I supposed to go?”
The streets of Jabaliya, which was already overpopulated, are packed with people who fled their homes in the eastern and northern Gaza Strip after the beginning of the Israeli ground invasion. Lt. Col. Peter Lerner of the Israeli military said no United Nations facility had been targeted during the operation. A military spokeswoman said Palestinian militants had “opened fire at Israeli soldiers from the vicinity” of the school in the Jabaliya refugee camp Wednesday morning, and that the Israeli troops “responded by firing toward the origins of the fire.”
Robert Turner, the Gaza-based director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which owns the school and was operating the shelter, said “at least three explosive projectiles” hit before dawn on Wednesday, when about 3,300 people were at the site. The military had earlier denied responsibility for 16 deaths last week at a different United Nations school serving as a shelter, in Beit Hanoun, saying that the only piece of Israeli ordnance to hit the school compound, an errant mortar, struck when the courtyard was empty.
Mr. Turner said the agency had provided the GPS coordinates of the Jabaliya school to the Israel Defense Forces 17 times, starting July 16 and most recently Tuesday at 8:48 p.m., to ensure it would be protected. Robert Turner, the Gaza-based director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which is sheltering more than 200,000 Palestinians in 85 of its schools, said Wednesday there had been at least five and perhaps seven strikes on the facilities since Israel’s ground operation in Gaza began on July 17. He was still checking reports that a school in the Shati refugee camp and one in the Mamouniya neighborhood of Gaza City had been hit overnight.
“These people were in this school because they’d been told by the I.D.F. to leave where they came from,” said Mr. Turner, whose agency is using 85 schools to house more than 200,000 Palestinians, most of whom had received evacuation notices. “They were told to move to these areas.” “What we’ve seen in our shelters is indicative of what we’ve seen more generally,” Mr. Turner said. “When they started naval bombardment, artillery and tank fire, that’s just not as accurate as airstrikes. They can’t see what they’re shooting at, so we’ve seen more destruction, more damage, more death.”
Among those killed was a United Nations security guard. “We’ve been on site, we’re gathered evidence, we’ve looked at the trajectory and we’re confident it was Israeli artillery fire,” Mr. Turner said. The Israeli military announced a four-hour humanitarian window Wednesday afternoon but said it would not apply to the areas where soldiers were operating, and that residents should not return to areas they had been asked to evacuate. That only added to the confusion on the ground, after four days of on-again, off-again lulls and mixed messages from various leaders about cease-fire agreements and negotiations.
He added that as many as seven school-shelters may have been struck since Israel’s ground invasion began on July 17, though he was still checking reports that one in the Shati refugee camp and another in the Gaza City neighborhood of Mamouniya were hit overnight. The “window” was to be from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., and the military promised in its announcement that troops would “respond to any attempt to exploit this window to harm Israeli civilians” and soldiers.
“What we’ve seen in our shelters is indicative of what we’ve seen more generally,” Mr. Turner said. “When they started naval bombardment, artillery and tank fire, that’s just not as accurate as airstrikes. “They can’t see what they’re shooting at, so we’ve seen more destruction, more damage, more death.” Hamas rejected the Israeli-declared lull, saying in a statement that it was “just for media consumption and has no value” because it excluded the areas near the border where hostilities continued, making it impossible to evacuate the injured from there.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which in calm times provides education, health care and other services to about 70 percent of Gaza’s 1.7 million residents who are classified as refugees, has found rockets in three of its empty schools during the conflict, most recently on Tuesday. He said officials were not able to gain access to the school on Tuesday because of fighting nearby, but that unlike the other two cases, they did not plan to turn them over to Gaza-based security officials, which had prompted criticism. The Israeli announcement came after it appeared to have intensified its assault overnight, even as Palestinian leaders struggled to coordinate their efforts to pursue some kind of cease-fire through talks in Cairo. The Palestinian death toll since the operation began on July 8 topped 1,250 by midday Wednesday, according to the Gaza-based health ministry; on the Israeli side, 53 soldiers and three civilians have been killed.
Israel struck five mosques overnight that a military statement said “were utilized for terror purposes,” such as storing weapons or providing access to tunnels or lookout points. The military said that it had detonated in the previous 24 hours three more tunnels that Palestinian militants have used to infiltrate its territory.
“The progress is toward an offensive: We are shoring up the targets already reached and are taking over new locations,” Brig. Gen. Motti Almoz, the chief spokesman for the Israeli military, told Army Radio on Wednesday morning. “There are a lot of targets in the Gaza Strip, and we are attacking from the northern to the southern Gaza Strip.”
Israel has hit 4,100 sites in Gaza, 1,566 of them connected to rocket-launching, 167 places that stored weapons and 746 “command-and-control centers,” the Israeli military said in its statement. The military said there had been 2,670 rockets and mortars fired toward Israel, and that about 280 of them had fallen short and landed within Gaza.
Only a handful of sirens signaling incoming rockets sounded in Israel on Wednesday morning, down from more than 100 in previous days. But in Gaza, there was little sign of a letup: An Israeli missile killed 10 members of the Astal family who had huddled in their diwan, or meeting room, according to news reports and the health ministry, among other major strikes.
Jabaliya, a refugee camp just north of Gaza City, has been under intense artillery shelling since Tuesday afternoon, killing 50 people over a 24-hour period, health officials said. Already one of Gaza’s most densely crowded areas, its streets had been packed in recent days with people who fled their homes closer to the border when Israeli troops invaded. More and more had crowded into the Abu Hussein girls’ elementary school.
Mr. Turner of the United Nations said his agency had provided the GPS coordinates of the school to the Israel Defense Forces 17 times, starting July 16 and most recently Tuesday at 8:48 p.m., to ensure it would be spared. Ziad Yousef, who also works for the agency, said the doors were locked at 11 p.m. Tuesday so no one could come or go.
“People who saw that happen are now convinced there are no safe places left,” Mr. Yousef said.
At least four strikes hit in close succession in a straight line across the school compound, indicating artillery fire, according to people who saw the attack; one struck a house behind the school. The drop ceiling of one classroom had collapsed, and the tin roof was peppered with shrapnel holes. The ground was covered with rubble, clothing and pools of blood. Sunlight shone through a hole in the roof of another classroom, also hit by a shell.
At the nearby Kamal Adwan hospital, Saeed Adham stood over the bed of his 15-year-old son, Rizek, whose right leg had been shattered by shrapnel. An X-ray of Rizek’s calf showed bones looking like an archipelago. Mr. Adham said his family was sleeping in a second-floor classroom when a strike shattered the windows, so they ran to a hallway, where a shell hit the roof. As he waited for surgery on his son’s leg, Mr. Adham said his wife and other children remained at Abu Hussein despite the danger. “We have nowhere but the school,” he said.
Mr. Turner’s agency, which in calm times provides education, health care and other services to about 70 percent of Gaza’s 1.7 million residents who are classified as refugees, has found rockets in three of its empty schools during the conflict, most recently on Tuesday. He said officials were not able to gain access to the school on Tuesday because of fighting nearby, but that unlike the other two cases, they did not plan to turn the rockets over to Gaza-based security officials, which had prompted criticism.
“We’ll try to render them safe or cordon them off,” Mr. Turner said.“We’ll try to render them safe or cordon them off,” Mr. Turner said.
Robert Serry, the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East peace process, released a statement Wednesday saying that his agency’s compound in Gaza had also been hit early Tuesday morning “by a number of projectiles which caused damage to the main building and to United Nations vehicles.” A preliminary assessment showed five strikes on the compound and two on the ground outside, the statement said. Robert H. Serry, the United Nations special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, released a statement on Wednesday saying that his agency’s compound in Gaza had also been hit early Tuesday morning “by a number of projectiles which caused damage to the main building and to United Nations vehicles.” A preliminary assessment showed five strikes on the compound and two on the ground outside, the statement said.
Mr. Serry “is deeply concerned about this incident and other violations of United Nations premises during the conflict,” said the statement, which did not directly blame Israel. “We have to remind relevant parties to the conflict of their responsibility to protect United Nations operations, personnel and premises which must remain inviolable.”Mr. Serry “is deeply concerned about this incident and other violations of United Nations premises during the conflict,” said the statement, which did not directly blame Israel. “We have to remind relevant parties to the conflict of their responsibility to protect United Nations operations, personnel and premises which must remain inviolable.”
Also at dawn Wednesday, an Israeli airplane fired a missile at the al-Astal family council in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, killing 10 people from the extended family, according to local reports and the Health Ministry.
The Israeli military denied responsibility for 16 deaths at a different United Nations school serving as a shelter, in Beit Hanoun, last week, saying that the only piece of Israeli ordnance to hit the school compound, an errant mortar, struck when the courtyard was empty. Witnesses have said they heard four or five booms as hundreds milled in the courtyard, preparing to evacuate the school.
Israel struck five mosques overnight that a military statement said “were utilized for terror purposes” such as storing weapons or providing access to tunnels or lookout points. The military said it had detonated three tunnel routes in the previous 24 hours.
Since the current operation began on July 8, the Israeli military statement said, Israel has hit 4,100 sites in Gaza, 1,566 of them connected to rocket-launching, 167 places that stored weapons and 746 “command-and-control centers.” The military said there had been 2,670 rockets and mortars fired toward Israel, and that about 280 of them had fallen short and landed within Gaza.
The Palestinian Health Ministry put the Palestinian death toll from the past three weeks of fighting at 1,258, many of them civilians. On the Israeli side, 56 had died as of Tuesday evening, 53 of them soldiers.