Israeli strike hits UN shelter in Gaza
SRAEL killed at least 19 Palestinians sheltering in a school in Gaza’s biggest refugee camp yesterday, a UN official said, as Egyptian mediators prepared a revised proposal to try to halt more than three weeks of fighting.
About 3 000 Palestinians, including many women and children, were taking refuge in the building in Jebalya refugee camp when it came under fire around dawn, Khalil al-Halabi, director of northern Gaza operations for the UN Relief and Works Agency, said.
“There were five shells – Israeli tank shells – which struck the people and killed many of them as they slept. Those people came to the school because it is a designated UN shelter,” he said.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said militants had fired mortar bombs from the vicinity of the school and troops had fired back in response.
The incident was still being reviewed.
The UN agency said it had found a cache of rockets concealed at another Gaza school – the third such find since the conflict began. It condemned unnamed groups for putting civilians at risk.
In addition to the 19 dead, 125 people were wounded at the Jabalya school, five of them critically, Halabi said.
A UN source said the agency had recovered fragments from the shells.
Blood splattered floors and mattresses inside classrooms, and some survivors picked
Ithrough shattered glass and debris for flesh and body parts to bury.
Israel has been shelling in Jebalya, where 120 000 people live, since Tuesday, in what the chief Israeli military spokesman, Brigadier-General Motti Almoz, described as a slight broadening of its campaign against militants in the Hamas Islamist-dominated Gaza Strip.
Israeli tank fire also struck the main market in Jebalya yesterday, killing at least three people and wounding 40 others, the Gaza Health Ministry said.
Seven members of one family died in an Israeli attack in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip.
The ministry said 1 270 Palestinians had been killed since the start of Israel’s offensive on July 8 with the aim of halting cross-border rocket fire.
In ground operations launched 10 days later, the army said its main mission was to locate and destroy tunnels that militants had built under the frontier and had used to launch attacks inside Israel.
On the Israeli side, 53 soldiers and three civilians have been killed. Public support remains strong for continuing the operation in the hope of preventing future flare-ups.
Mohammed Deif, the shadowy leader of Hamas’s armed wing, said in a broadcast message that Palestinians would continue confronting Israel until its blockade on Gaza – which is supported by neighbouring Egypt – was lifted.
Five rockets were fired from Gaza at Israel yesterday, landing harmlessly in open areas, police said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was due to review progress with his security cabinet yesterday, and a Palestinian delegation was expected in Cairo for discussions on an elusive truce.
In previous bouts of fighting between Israel and its neighbours, the US has often leant on the Israelis to stop after incidents that have caused high civilian casualties. Washington appears to have less sway with either side this time.
Egypt said it was revising an unconditional ceasefire proposal that Israel had originally accepted but Hamas rejected, and that a new offer would be presented to the Palestinian representatives.
The UN Relief and Works Agency said it was at “breaking point” with more than 200 000 Palestinians having taken shelter in schools and buildings in Gaza after calls by Israel for civilians to evacuate whole neighbourhoods before the military operations.
Both US President Barack Obama and the UN Security Council have called for an immediate ceasefire to allow relief to reach Gaza’s 1.8 million Palestinians, followed by negotiations on a more durable end to hostilities. – Reuters