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08-06-2024
WASHINGTON/ JERUSALEM/ GAZA CITY: The US has told Israel it must be fully “transparent” over an air strike that reportedly killed at least 35 people at a central Gaza school packed with displaced people on Thursday morning.
Local journalists told media a warplane had fired two missiles at classrooms on the top floor of the school in the Nuseirat urban refugee camp.
The Israeli military said it had conducted a “precise” strike on a “Hamas compound” in the school, but Gaza’s Hamas-run government media office denied the claim.
The US called on Israel to identify publicly the Hamas fighters it said it had killed just as the Israeli military gave the names of nine of them.
Israel frequently identifies militants it targets in air strikes but it is rare for the US to urge it to do so.
The Israelis “told us there were 20 to 30 militants they were targeting [and] they’re going to release the names of those they believe they’ve killed, those militants”, US state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.
“That is what they have said they would provide. We expect them to do that, as well as any other details that would shed light on this incident.”
In a near-simultaneous news briefing, Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari gave the names of nine Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters he said had been killed in the strike. He said more would be identified after work to “verify the information”.
In Washington, Miller said the US has seen reports that 14 children were killed in the strike.
“If that is accurate that 14 children were killed, those aren’t terrorists,” he said.
“And so the government of Israel has said they are going to release more information about this strike… We expect them to be fully transparent in making that information public.”
The latest strike, local journalists and residents say, happened in the early hours of Thursday at al-Sardi school, which is in a south-eastern area of the densely populated, decades-old camp, where the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, provides services.
Videos shared on social media showed the destruction of several classrooms in one of the school’s buildings, as well as bodies wrapped in white shrouds and blankets.
Dead and wounded people were rushed to the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital, in the nearby town of Deir al-Balah, which has been overwhelmed since the Israeli military began a new ground operation against Hamas in central Gaza this week.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said 40 people had been killed, including 14 children and nine women, and 74 others had been injured.
Unrwa’s commissioner-general, Philippe Lazzarini, said at least 35 people had been killed and many more had been injured. The agency’s director of communications, Juliette Touma, told media the figures were coming from Unrwa “colleagues on the ground”.
“I was asleep when the incident occurred,” Udai Abu Elias, a man who was living at the school, told media.
“Suddenly we heard a loud explosion and shattered glass and debris from the building fell on us. Smoke filled the air and I couldn’t see anything. I didn’t expect to make it out alive. I heard someone calling for survivors to come out from under the rubble. I struggled to see as I stumbled over the bodies of the martyrs.”
Unrwa said 6,000 displaced people had been sheltering in the school complex at the time. Many schools and other UN facilities have been used as shelters by the 1.7 million people who have fled their homes during the war, which has lasted almost eight months. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
