An Israeli bombing has caused the death of dozens of Palestinians who were taking refuge in a Gaza school, in the Al Jabalia camp, and which operates under the administration of the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).
The agency’s commissioner general, Philippe Lazzarini, has stated that they have received “horrible images and recordings of dozens of dead and injured people” in one of the schools where thousands of displaced people from the Gaza Strip are taking refuge.
Lazzarini has denounced in X that “this type of attacks cannot be normalized, they must stop. The humanitarian ceasefire cannot wait any longer.” Israeli Army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner told the BBC that they “cannot confirm” that the incident is Israel’s responsibility. Lerner added that they have seen “the same images as you on social networks, we are investigating it.”
The attack, which according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA has also left a significant number of people injured, occurred against the Al Fajura school. The Indonesian hospital in Gaza has received dozens of deaths as a result of this attack, mostly children and women.
“There are bodies everywhere and medical teams are trying to evacuate the injured,” Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Abou Azzoum reported from the scene. The Al Fajura school was already the target of an Israeli attack on the 4th of this month in which a dozen people died and fifty were injured.
Receiving horrifying images & footage of scores of people killed and injured in another @UNRWA school sheltering thousands of displaced in the north of the Gaza Strip.
These attacks cannot become commonplace, they must stop. A humanitarian ceasefire cannot wait any longer.
— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) November 18, 2023
The school is located in the Al Jabalia refugee camp, whose immediate evacuation the Israeli Army requested this Saturday. According to EFE, the Israeli Defense Forces offered its inhabitants a window of several hours to leave this and two other areas of Gaza City, in the north of the Strip.
Jordan’s Foreign Ministry has condemned the attack, calling it “a continuation of heinous war crimes” by Israel. Jordan has also assured that “this is a clear violation of international law in the absence of a common international position to stop the humanitarian disaster and the suffering they are causing,” reports the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
The victims in the Gaza Strip due to Israeli attacks, in retaliation for the attack carried out by Hamas on October 7, have exceeded 12,000 dead this week, including 5,000 children, and more than 3,700 missing.
