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In Gaza, at Least 16 Die at U.N. School Used as Civilian Shelter
Blasts Kill 16 Seeking Haven at Gaza School
(about 5 hours later)
BEIT HANOUN, Gaza Strip — A series of explosions at a school run by the United Nations sheltering hundreds of Palestinians who had fled their homes for safety from Israeli military assaults killed at least 16 people on Thursday afternoon and wounded many more. The cause was not immediately clear.
BEIT HANOUN, Gaza Strip — For more than a week, as the war engulfed their homes, families in this northern Gaza town packed up their belongings and children and headed to the one place they presumed would remain safe: the United Nations school.
Many Palestinians initially presumed it was an Israeli strike that hit the shelter in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, but the Israeli military suggested soon afterward that errant Palestinian-fired munitions might have been the source. The local director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which runs the school, said he could not be sure.
But in the last few days, the war approached there as well. The Israeli military warned on Monday that the shelter should be evacuated. By Thursday, the United Nations had decided to withdraw its staff and to stop providing food.
Israeli officials denied having intentionally targeted the school and said they had warned the United Nations three days earlier that the school should be evacuated because the surrounding area was a combat zone.
Then, as the Palestinians gathered in the courtyard on Thursday, believing they were about to be bused elsewhere, blasts tore through the crowd, killing 16 people and sending scores of wounded, mostly women and children, streaming into local hospitals.
The civilians who had taken refuge in the school had been gathering in the courtyard preparing to flee just when it was hit multiple times, according to witnesses.
The source of the blasts remained unclear, setting off recriminations between Israelis and Palestinians over which side was responsible. People in the school reported from three to five blasts and accused Israel of shelling them. Israel suggested that rockets fired by militants might have fallen short of their targets or that the school may have been hit with errant shells from either side in fighting nearby. The United Nations said it could not confirm the source of the blasts.
The shelling of the school, on the 17th day of an increasingly bloody conflict between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, came just as efforts led by Secretary of State John Kerry to establish a cease-fire were intensifying.
The shelling came on the 17th day of an increasingly bloody conflict between Israel and Palestinian militants that has killed nearly 800 people in Gaza. On the Israeli side, 32 soldiers and three civilians have been killed. This was the fourth time that United Nations schools had been struck.
Whoever was responsible for the school casualties, it was the kind of event that could increase diplomatic pressure on the combatants to stop the fighting, which has left more than 750 Palestinians dead from Israeli attacks, most of them civilians. On the Israeli side, 32 soldiers and three civilians have been killed.
The blasts in Beit Hanoun highlighted the desperate search by Gaza civilians to find refuge. It also came as Secretary of State John Kerry was pushing intensively to achieve a cease-fire. One proposal under discussion, according to an official involved, was for a seven-day pause that could begin on Sunday.
“We are deeply saddened and concerned about the tragic incident at the U.N. Relief and Works Agency school and about the rising civilian death toll in Gaza,” Jen Psaki, a State Department spokeswoman, said in a statement. “This also underscores the need to end the violence and to achieve a sustainable cease-fire and enduring resolution to the crisis in Gaza as soon as possible.”
“We want to the school to be safe,” said Mohammed Shinbary, kneeling on the floor of a hospital here and cradling his wounded 7-year-old daughter Aya. “And then they hit the school.”
Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary-general, who was in the region this week to try to advance cease-fire efforts and met with Mr. Kerry on Wednesday, said in a statement that he was “appalled” by the school attack.
This particular school is run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, known for short as Unrwa, which provides services to Palestinian refugees across the Middle East. But Gaza’s unique makeup gives Unrwa an outsize role in the small, coastal enclave.
“Many have been killed — including women and children, as well as U.N. staff,” he said. “Circumstances are still unclear. I strongly condemn this act.” He said that throughout the day, United Nations staff had been attempting to arrange a pause in the hostilities so that civilians could be evacuated.
More than 70 percent of Gaza’s 1.7 million people are registered refugees, most of them descended from Palestinians who fled or were forced to leave their homes during the war over Israel’s creation in 1948.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza said at least 16 people had been killed and “a large number” wounded at the Beit Hanoun school.
The extensive services Unrwa provides in Gaza give it a status similar to that of a government. It runs hundreds of schools and medical centers, oversees infrastructure projects and provides regular food aid to about half the population. It is Gaza’s second largest employer and has remained as governments and occupations have come and gone for more than 60 years.
A senior Israeli military official, Brig. Gen. Michael Edelstein, the commander of the Gaza division, told reporters in a telephone briefing that he did not yet know what had happened. “If we made a mistake, we will say it,” he said.
“We are the only constant in Gaza,” said Robert Turner, Unrwa’s director for Gaza.
He said Israel was not acting intentionally against any United Nations infrastructure in Gaza. “We would never bomb such a place,” he said.
Gazans call it simply “the agency.”
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman, said that troops had not targeted the school but that fighting was raging nearby. He said several rockets aimed at Israel had fallen short and landed in the area around the same time.
It is this long relationship, Mr. Turner said, that has led 150,000 Gazans — more than 8 percent of the population — to seek refuge from the war in Unrwa’s schools.
“Indeed, there was combat there, and we have to determine whether it has anything to do with us,” Colonel Lerner said. “We have decisive information that several projectiles launched from within Gaza struck in Beit Hanoun between 2 o’clock and 4:15.”
The attack on Thursday came after both the United Nations and Israel realized that those sheltering in the school were in danger but before they could be moved elsewhere.
Colonel Lerner said the military had “appealed” to the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross on Monday to evacuate the school because of what he called “terrorist activities there and because of our activities in the area.” He said word came Thursday afternoon that the aid organizations would move people. Then, 15 minutes later, the school was hit.
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman, said Israel had asked the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross on Monday to evacuate the school because both Palestinian militants and the Israeli army were active nearby. Word came on Thursday that an evacuation was being prepared, he said, but the school was hit soon after.
“They, unfortunately, did not comply three days ago,” Colonel Lerner said. “We don’t strike schools. We don’t strike U.N. facilities. We do not target the United Nations.”
Colonel Lerner said Israeli troops did not aim at the school but that fighting was raging nearby and several rockets launched at Israel had fallen short and landed in the area. “There was combat there and we have to determine whether it has anything to do with us,” he said.
Jacques de Maio, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation for Israel and the Occupied Territories, the only humanitarian agency currently on the ground in Beit Hanoun, said by telephone that Beit Hanoun represented “a kind of conundrum where two parties are fighting, where you have civilians and military targets that are simply too close to each other.” That did not exonerate either side, he said.
Mr. Turner of the United Nations said his office had told Israel that hundreds of people were sheltering in the school and provided its coordinates — 12 times — most recently at 10:56 a.m. Thursday. He said it was the only shelter in Beit Hanoun where the agency was still providing services, after others had been deemed too dangerous, and that the Israeli warnings had made the United Nations decide to withdraw its staff and tell the Gazans it was no longer safe.
A United Nations relief official told reporters in New York on Wednesday that at least 72 United Nations schools, hospitals and offices have been damaged in the latest fighting, even though they are visibly marked.
But after Israeli warnings that the area was dangerous, the United Nations decided to withdraw its staff and told the Gazans the area was unsafe.
“Each and every one of their GPS references have been provided to the Israeli military,” said the official, John Ging, director of operations for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Mr. Turner said the United Nations had not confirmed the source of the blasts. He added that in the earlier instances when schools had been hit, he was “certain” that Israel was responsible.
The Beit Hanoun school was the third one serving as a shelter to be hit during the current conflict. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which essentially acts as a government for Palestinian refugees in the Middle East, said that more than 140,000 residents of Gaza were now staying in 83 schools where it has set up shelters.
But an Israeli official who coordinates with international organizations said this week that he had provided military commanders with coordinates of 523 sensitive sites to avoid. He showed reporters a graphic with dates and times of rockets being launched from several such sites — including a mosque, a hospital and a playground — in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City.
Robert Turner, the director of Gaza operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, commonly known by its initials U.N.R.W.A., said he had few details about the strike in Beit Hanoun, because when he went to investigate, “we got a hostile reception.”
“It’s easy to blame us. ‘Why are you hitting that hospital?’ Why not blame them? Why are you launching from those sensitive places?” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity under military rules.
On Wednesday morning, Mr. Turner said, a school sheltering 2,000 people in Deir el Balah, in central Gaza, was struck in what was believed to be a drone attack. On Tuesday, a boy was injured by an artillery shell at a school in the Mughazi refugee camp. When United Nations workers went in to investigate — after being told by the Israeli authorities that they had a two-hour window in which it would be safe to operate — there was more shelling, Mr. Turner said, though no one was wounded.
Jacques De Maio, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation for Israel and the Occupied Territories, called the situation in Beit Hanoun a “conundrum” where “you have civilians and military targets that are simply too close to each other.”
“We’re concerned that these messages are either not being passed, or if they are being passed they are not being implemented as we would like,” he said of coordination between the Israelis charged with civilian protection and the military. “We’re not questioning the good will and hard work of the people” working with the United Nations, he added, “but we’re concerned about coordination and translation into action on the ground.”
He denied that the Red Cross had been involved in any planned evacuation.
Witnesses to the Beit Hanoun school attack said that they had gathered in the courtyard and were waiting to be evacuated to a safer area when explosives rained down.
Hamas, the militant group that rules Gaza and is leading the fight for the Palestinians, blamed Israel or striking the school, calling it “an ugly war crime.”
Eight of the dead and about 80 wounded were brought to the Kamal Odwan Hospital, the nearest facility, where rooms and hallways were packed with wounded patients and their relatives.
Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary-general, who was in the region this week to try to advance cease-fire efforts and met with Mr. Kerry, said in a statement that he was “appalled” by the school attack.
Many said they had fled with their families from homes in the areas days before because of Israeli shelling and that the situation in the school had been getting worse as food and water became scarce.
“Many have been killed — including women and children, as well as U.N. staff,” he said, adding that United Nations staff had been trying throughout the day to arrange a pause in the hostilities so that civilians could be evacuated.
They also said that on Thursday they had been instructed to gather in the school’s courtyard because the Red Cross was sending buses to take them to another school in a relatively safer part of Gaza.
For those inside the school, the blasts punctuated days of steadily declining conditions.
It was early afternoon, after they had gathered, that the strikes came.
As doctors scrambled to treat the scores of patients that flooded into the hospital closest to the blast, the wounded and their relatives pondered how they had lost so much in a place they had expected to be safe.
“We went to the school to be safe and then they hit the school,” said Mohammed Shinbary, kneeling on the hospital floor and cradling his wounded daughter, Mahasin, 7.
All denied that there had been Hamas fighters in the area.
Everyone interviewed said that there had been no fighting in the immediate vicinity although they had heard shelling. All said there had been no Hamas fighters nearby but that they wanted to be moved elsewhere because they were running low on food and water.
“If the resistance had come to us, we would have died a long time ago,” said Bilal Nassir, suggesting that the presence of militant groups would have brought an earlier Israeli assault. “We had no resistance at all in the area.”
Amina Nassir stood over a single gurney holding two of her daughters: Fatima, 13, had lost a chunk of flesh from her leg and Aya, 12, had a broken shoulder and had shrapnel wounds on both legs.
In a hospital hallway, Amina Nassir stood over a single hospital gurney holding two of her daughters: Fatima, 13, had lost a chunk of flesh from her leg, and Aya, 12, who had broken her right shoulder and had shrapnel wounds in both legs. A third daughter had also been wounded.
Ms. Nassir said she and her family had come to the school eight days before when shelling had begun near their home. Many other families had come too, packing into the classrooms.
Ms. Nassir said shelling near her home had caused her family to flee to the school eight days before. Many other families had come too, packing the classrooms, and as time went on, the shelling got closer and food and water grew scarce.
Survivors differed on who had told them to prepare for evacuation, with some saying it was the Red Cross and others saying it was a local government official.
On Thursday, word came that buses were coming to transport everyone to a safer school, she said, so they gathered their things and collected in the courtyard where they sat when the blasts struck.
But all said it was after they had gathered that the strikes happened. Most said there were at least four strikes, though they were unclear what kind of explosives hit the school.
Like other survivors, she said there had been no Hamas fighters in area and seemed shocked that her family had been harmed inside the school.
Many appeared shocked that the attack had occurred inside the school grounds, a place they assumed would be spared.
“I don’t know where we can go now,” Ms. Nassir said. “We can’t go home and the schools are unsafe.”
“I don’t know where we can go now,” Ms. Nassir said. “We can’t go home and even the schools are unsafe.”
Another survivor of the attack, Nidal Shayboub, 20, said he and 27 members of his extended family had been staying at the school because of shelling near their homes.
Mr. Shayboub, his pants bloody from a shrapnel wound in his buttocks, said a friend had told him that four of his relatives had been killed: Mr. Shayboub’s mother, brother, and two aunts.
He and others said that militants had not fired from the school at Israeli forces. They suspected, however, that Israeli troops had seen a hole the residents punched through a school wall in order to gain access to a neighbor’s water supply, and might have mistaken it for a sign of fighting.
Israeli officials have said schools are among the places where militants store and launch rockets. Twice during this conflict rockets have been discovered at vacant U.N.R.W.A. schools. Some Israelis have complained that agency personnel turned the rockets over to the security services affiliated with Hamas. Mr. Turner acknowledged that they had given the rockets to the Hamas-controlled Interior Ministry, but said there had been no one else to call.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said earlier Thursday that more than 40 people had been killed in fighting elsewhere in Gaza on Thursday.
The Israeli military said that two rocket barrages were fired from Gaza in the morning and about five were intercepted over the Tel Aviv area by Israel’s Iron Dome antimissile defense system. Some shrapnel fell in Tel Aviv but there were no reports of serious injuries.
During a visit to Israel, the new British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, laid the blame on Hamas for the conflict by “firing hundreds of rockets at Israeli towns and cities indiscriminately and in breach of international humanitarian law.”
But in a joint news conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Mr. Hammond also said Britain was “gravely concerned by the ongoing heavy level of casualties” and called for a quick agreement on a cease-fire.
Mr. Netanyahu said: “The terrorists are firing rockets from schools, from mosques, from hospitals, from heavily civilian populations and we have to try and are doing our best to minimize civilian casualties. But we cannot give our attackers immunity or impunity.”
