United Nations leaders accused Israel on Thursday of violating international humanitarian law, saying six of its workers were among 18 people killed in an airstrike on a school in central Gaza that was sheltering displaced Palestinians.
“What is happening in Gaza is completely unacceptable,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a message 10 hours after Wednesday’s attack on the Al-Jaouni school in the Nuseirat refugee camp.
“These dramatic violations of international humanitarian law must stop now,” he added.
According to the Gaza Civil Defense, at least 18 people killed in the airstrike included children. It is the fifth time Israeli forces have attacked the facility during Israel’s nearly year-long offensive in Gaza.
The United Nations refugee agency, known as UNRWA, which runs the school as a shelter for displaced Palestinians, said more than 12,000 people had been taken in.
The shelter’s manager was one of six workers killed, the company said, adding that it was the “highest death toll among our staff in a single incident.”
The Israel Defense Forces said it had carried out a “precise attack” on the school, targeting Hamas members, in a statement posted on Telegram on Wednesday. It said the militant group was using the complex as a “command and control center” to plan and carry out attacks on Israeli forces, without providing evidence.
“Numerous steps” were taken to reduce the risk of harm to civilians, including the use of precision munitions, aerial surveillance and additional intelligence.
In a later statement on X, IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said it had asked UNRWA to provide the names of the killed workers.
He added that a military investigation suggested that “a significant number” of the dead, as reported in the media and social media, “were Hamas terrorists who participated in terrorist activities against citizens of the State of Israel and IDF forces.”
He provided no evidence to support his claim.
NBC News has contacted the Israeli military for comment on claims that the school was used as a base by Hamas and that Hamas fighters were among the dead.
Shortly after the attack, an NBC News team on the ground in Gaza captured video footage showing Palestinians carrying the dead and wounded.
At one point a man is seen carrying a small body covered in a white shroud, soaked in blood.
Notebooks, clothes and cans of food were scattered on the ground, splattered with what appeared to be blood.
More than 40,900 people have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, according to health officials in the enclave. Israel launched its military offensive after 1,200 people were killed and about 250 others taken hostage in Hamas’s multiple attacks that day, officials in the country said.
UNRWA said in a statement on Thursday that schools and other civilian infrastructure “must be protected at all times” and called on “all parties to the conflict never to use schools or the areas surrounding them for military or combat purposes.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
