Middle East: Gaza reports scores dead in school strike

Deutsche Welle

10 Aug 2024, 17:38

Photo: Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP/Getty Images

Israel's military described the site as a "Hamas command and control center embedded" within a school in Gaza City. The attack took place in the early hours of Saturday.

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UN special rapporteur speaks of genocide after school attack
An independent expert appointed by the United Nations to monitor the rights situation in the Palestinian territories has accused Israel of carrying out a gradual genocide of Palestinians through its Gaza offensive in the wake of Saturday's strike on a Gaza City school.

"Israel is genociding the Palestinians one neighbourhood 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," Francesca Albanese, said on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

Albanese, an international lawyer who was appointed as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories in 2022, already reported to the UN Human Rights Council in March that Israel was committing genocidal acts in Gaza.

At the time, Israel's diplomatic mission in Geneva called her accusations "outrageous" and said the Israeli offensive was against the Islamist group Hamas and not Palestinian civilians.

Albanese has been accused of antisemitism and anti-Israel bias by some, but has received widespread support from rights groups and scholars as well.

An ongoing case at the UN's International Court of Justice in The Hague, brought by South Africa, is examining whether Israel can be considered guilty of genocide. The case will take years to settle.

School strike a sign of lack of Israeli will to peace, says Egypt
Egypt, a key mediator between Hamas and Israel amid the war in Gaza, has strongly condemned Israel's Saturday attack on a school in Gaza City, saying it showed an "unprecedented disregard for international law."

The Foreign Ministry in Cairo said the attack, which Palestinian media said killed more than 90 people, was a "continuation of crimes on a large scale" in which "huge numbers of unarmed civilians" have lost their lives.

It said the strike was "clear proof" that there was no will on the part of Israel to end the war in Gaza, coming as it did while mediators were trying to bring about a cease-fire in the conflict.

Neighboring Jordan also condemned the attack, calling it a "blatant violation" of international law.

Israel says its attack targeted a "Hamas command and control center" that had been operating from inside the school, while the extremist Islamist group says the site was being used exclusively as a shelter for people displaced by the conflict.

The claims made by the two sides cannot yet be independently verified.

Israel and Hamas issue conflicting claims on school attack
Israel has said its strike on a Gaza school has killed Palestinian militants after Palestinian media reported that between 90 and 100 people who were sheltering there had been killed.

"Based on Israeli intelligence, approx. 20 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants, including senior commanders, were operating from the compound struck at the Al-Tabaeen school, using it to carry out terrorist attacks," IDF spokesperson Nadav Shoshani said on X, formerly Twitter.

"The compound, and the mosque that was struck within it, served as an active Hamas and Islamic Jihad military facility," he added.

No evidence was provided and the claim could not be independently verified.

whose assertions Shoshani described as "sorely unreliable" — has denied that the school was being used as a command center, with witnesses describing scenes of carnage in what the militant group said was a shelter for displaced people.

One person working to rescue people at the site, Abu Anas, told the Associated Press (AP) that the attacks came without warning before sunrise during prayers at a mosque inside the school.

"There were people praying, there were people washing and there were people upstairs sleeping, including children, women and old people," he said. "The missile fell on them without warning. The first missile, and the second. We recovered them as body parts."

Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesperson for the Civil Defense first responders who operate under the Hamas-run government, told AP that there were 6,000 people in the school taking shelter from the conflict.

The ongoing Israeli offensive in Gaza is in response to an attack in southern Israel on October 7 by Hamas and associated militants in which some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed, and 250 taken hostage.

Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization by Israel, the US and Germany among others. Israel is being investigated over claims of war crimes and genocide committed during its operations in Gaza.

The UN has reported that 477 out of the 564 schools in Gaza, as of July 6, have been directly hit or damaged in the most recent conflict.

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