At least 18 people, including six staff members of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), were killed on Wednesday, September 11, in an Israeli airstrike on al-Jaouni school, a shelter for displaced Palestinians in Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp.
The attack, which Israel claims targeted a Hamas command centre, has sparked widespread condemnation, with critics citing the lack of evidence to support Israel’s justification for the strike.
The UNRWA said the bombing of the al-Jaouni school, which had been housing 12,000 displaced Palestinians, resulted in the highest death toll among its staff in a single incident since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza.
“Six colleagues lost today. That brings the death toll among UNRWA staff in this conflict to 220, the highest in United Nations history,” said William Deere, an UNRWA official based in Washington, DC.
Witnesses to the attack described horrific scenes, with women and children torn apart by the blast. A grieving Palestinian mother, who lost all six of her children in the strike, questioned the legitimacy of Israel’s actions.
“Are these children terrorists?” she asked in a video testimony shared with Al Jazeera. “The Israelis destroyed our home; killed and starved our people; women are widowed, and children orphaned.”
The attack on the UN-run school has drawn sharp criticism from international leaders. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the strike “unacceptable,” prompting a response from Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon.
Danon accused Guterres of distorting reality, claiming that terrorists were using the school as a base of operations. However, Israel has yet to provide evidence supporting this assertion.
Jordan’s Foreign Ministry condemned the strike as a violation of international law and called on the UN Security Council to take decisive action. Qatar’s Foreign Ministry similarly condemned the attack, labelling it a “horrific massacre” and demanding an independent UN investigation into Israel’s repeated targeting of schools and shelters.
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Protests erupted globally in response to the escalation of violence in Gaza. In Melbourne, demonstrators gathered for a second day outside the Land Forces International Land Defence Exposition, clashing with police in the city’s largest operation since the World Economic Forum in 2000. Protesters denounced the Israeli military’s actions, calling for an end to what they described as war crimes against Palestinians.
In the United States, Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders joined the chorus of voices calling for an end to US funding of Israel’s military operations in Gaza. “Enough is enough. No more money for Netanyahu’s war machine,” Sanders wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, condemned the strike, stating, “No words can reflect the true horror and loss of life in Gaza.” He added that hospitals, schools, and shelters had been repeatedly bombarded, calling for the violence to cease.
As the war rages on, the international community continues to grapple with the consequences of the escalating violence. The Palestinian Foreign Ministry called for international protection, urging the global community to stop what they described as a “war of extermination” against the Palestinian people.
