At least 14 Palestinians killed in Israeli strike on Gaza school 

Israeli forces have bombed another school-turned-shelter in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 18 people, including six staff at the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

Witnesses said Wednesday’s attack on al-Jaouni school in the Nuseirat refugee camp tore women and children to pieces, while UNRWA said the casualties among its staff amounted to the “highest death toll” in a single incident in the 11-month war.

Some 12,000 displaced Palestinians, most of them women and children, were sheltering at al-Jaouni, according to UNRWA, when Israeli forces carried out two air attacks on the building.

The shelter is operated by the UN and those killed included its manager.

UNRWA said Wednesday’s attacks marked the fifth time the school has been hit since Israel’s war on Gaza began last October.

“No one is safe in Gaza. No one is spared,” it said in a post on X.

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from the site of the attack, said there was a “tremendous amount of destruction” at the school while the smell of blood permeated the air.

“We can see huge holes in the wall, and we can see people are looking for anything they can salvage after the destruction of this UN-run shelter,” he said. “The scale of destruction is unprecedented and … piles of rubble and dirt are covering this entire area.”

Abu Azzoum said the school was “hit at a time when people were waiting for food” and that emergency workers were “digging the rubble with their bare hands due to the lack of basic equipment”.

A Palestinian woman is seen reaching for her son after the Israeli army targeted the al-Jaouni school, where thousands of displaced people took refuge at the Nuseirat refugee camp in Deir el-Balah, Gaza, on September 11, 2024 [Moez Salhi/Anadolu]

‘Women, children blown to pieces’

One Palestinian woman who survived the attack said she had lost all of her six children.

“Are these children terrorists? May God punish them. The Israelis destroyed our home; killed and starved our people; women are widowed and children orphaned,” the unidentified woman told Al Jazeera in a video testimony.

“Six children … What crime, what wrong did those innocent children do?”

Another survivor said the section of the school that was hit had been “dedicated only to women”.

“All of a sudden there was a huge explosion … Women and children were blown to pieces. We rushed to see our children but found them torn to pieces,” he told Al Jazeera in a video testimony.

“This is the fifth time – the fifth time! – the school building has been pounded by Israeli warplanes. It is supposed to be a safe sheltering area,” he added.

The Israeli military confirmed carrying out the attack but said it had targeted a Hamas command and control centre. Without providing evidence, it said the compound was used to plan and carry out attacks against Israeli forces in Gaza and against Israel.

Al-Jaouni is at least the sixth school to be targeted by Israeli shelling or air raids since August 1. Tens of thousands of Palestinians driven from their homes by Israeli offensives and evacuation orders are sheltering in Gaza’s schools.

On August 1, at least 15 people were killed in an Israeli attack on the Dalal al-Mughrabi school in Gaza City, while on August 3, another 16 were killed in the bombing of the Hamama school, also in Gaza City.

On August 4, at least 30 people were killed in Israeli air raids on the Nassr and Hassan Salama schools, west of Gaza City, while on August 8, at least 17 were killed in attacks on Abdul Fattah Hamouda and az-Zahra schools, which are also located in Gaza City.

And on August 10, more than 100 people were killed and 150 others wounded after Israeli forces bombed al-Tabin school, east of Gaza City.

‘Totally unacceptable’

William Deere, director of UNRWA’s Washington Office, told Al Jazeera that Israeli forces have targeted a total of 190 UN-run facilities in the course of the war, “many of them more than once”. That’s despite the agency sharing their GPS coordinates with the Israeli military.

He mourned the death of his colleagues, saying Israel’s war on Gaza appears to have “absolutely no bottom to it”.

“Six colleagues lost today, that brings the death toll among UNRWA staff in this conflict to 220, which is the highest ever in United Nations history,” Deere told Al Jazeera. But, “our staff are on the front lines, and they’re not going to back down, they’re not going to stop doing their job”, he added.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres meanwhile denounced the lack of accountability for the killings of humanitarian workers in Gaza, and called for effective investigations into their deaths.

“We have courts, but we see that the decisions of courts are not respected, and it is this kind of limbo of accountability that is totally unacceptable and that requires also a serious a serious reflection,” Guterres told the Reuters news agency.

The killings in al-Jaouni came as Israeli forces continued attacks elsewhere in the Gaza Strip, including a home in southern Khan Younis. At least 11 people, including six brothers and sisters from the same family, were killed in the attack. Their ages ranged from 21 months to 21 years old, according to the European Hospital, which received the casualties.

Israeli fighter jets also attacked a group of people waiting to buy bread outside a bakery west of Gaza City, according to the Palestinian Civil Defence, killing at least three people and wounding seven more.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health said Israel’s 11-month-old assault on Gaza has now killed at least 41,084 people and wounded another 95,029.