UN rights office condemns Israeli strikes at Gazan school

The UN Human Rights Office condemned on Saturday the increasing frequency of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) strikes on schools, where hundreds of thousands of forcibly displaced Palestinians have sought shelter, with the latest attacks killing dozens at a Gaza City school.

At around 4:30 (GMT+3) during dawn prayer on Saturday, a mosque inside Al Tabaeen School was struck by the IDF "at least three times”, the UN rights office, OHCHR, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory said in a statement carried by UN News. OHCHR added that the attacks were "conducted with apparent disregard for the high rate of civilian fatalities”.

An initial report showed the strikes killed at least 93 Palestinians, including 11 children and six women.

Between 7th October and 8th August, at least 39,699 Palestinians were killed and 91,722 were injured in the ongoing war, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

More than 90 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has been displaced, many multiple times, since 7th October, when Hamas-led attacks on Israel left 1,200 dead and 250 people taken hostage, with more than 100 remaining in Gaza as talks continue to end the war.

Schools, UN facilities and civilian infrastructure should not be targets, Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN relief agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, reiterated in a social media post on Saturday.

"Another day of horror in Gaza, another school hit with reports of dozens of Palestinian killed among them women, children and older people,” he said, adding that parties to the conflict must not use schools and other civilian facilities for military or fighting purposes and must, at all times, protect civilians and civilian infrastructure.

"It’s time for these horrors unfolding under our watch to end,” he said. "We cannot let the unbearable become a new norm. The more recurrent, the more we lose our collective humanity.”

WAM