U.N. Leaders Decry Attacks In Gaza After Israeli Strike Kills 6 Relief Agency Workers

United Nations leaders and others in the international community have fiercely denounced the escalation of violence against humanitarian sites and aid workers in Gaza after Israeli forces killed at least 18 people sheltering at a U.N. school complex overnight on Wednesday, including six staff members of a U.N. relief agency.

Israeli airstrikes hit the United Nations’ al-Jaouni Preparatory Boys School in central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp. The school complex, like others in Gaza, has been turned into a shelter for thousands of displaced Palestinians to receive food, water and medical aid since the U.S.-funded military offensive on the territory began in retaliation for an Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist strike on Israelis.

The strikes on the school killed at least 18 people, including women and children, according to UNRWA, the primary U.N. agency providing relief to Palestinians. The attack also killed six UNRWA employees in what the agency said was the deadliest single incident for its staff, bringing the total number of UNRWA workers killed in Gaza to at least 220 in the last 11 months.

“This is one of the most difficult days that we’ve faced in UNRWA in Gaza during the most difficult conflict that we’ve ever faced,” Sam Rose, senior deputy director of UNRWA affairs in Gaza, told Al Jazeera on Thursday. “Staff in the offices are in shock. They’re grieving, they’re despairing.”

“It’s devastating, it’s horrific, it’s all these superlatives,” he said. “And just the scale and the rapidity of the incidents are just too difficult to get our heads around sometimes.”

"This is one of the most difficult days that we've faced in @UNRWA in #Gaza during the most difficult conflict that we've ever faced."

Sam Rose to @AJEnglish on the horrific attack on one of our schools in Nuseirat yesterday, where six of our colleagues were killed. pic.twitter.com/FktfwjF9xI

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) September 12, 2024

Israeli officials have defended the attack, claiming that some of the UNRWA employees were members of Hamas, a claim the Israel Defense Forces often make regarding attacks on the agency’s aid workers. Israel has so far not provided any concrete evidence, though, according to Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesperson for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.

“The IDF stated that they had targeted a command-and-control center in the compound. This incident must be independently and thoroughly investigated to ensure accountability,” Dujarric said in a statement on Thursday.

“The continued lack of effective protection for civilians in Gaza is unconscionable. Civilians and the infrastructure they rely on must be protected and the essential needs of civilians met,” he added. “The Secretary-General calls upon all parties to refrain from using schools, shelters or the areas around them for military purposes.”

Wednesday was the fifth time that Israel had bombed the al-Jaouni school, according to UNRWA. Israeli forces frequently attack schools in Gaza by using the often-unsubstantiated claim that the structures are being used by Hamas. More than 90% of Gaza’s school buildings have been severely or partially damaged in airstrikes, according to a July survey by the Education Cluster, a coalition of aid groups led by UNICEF and Save the Children.

UNRWA said it had informed the Israeli military ahead of time that the al-Jaouni school was being used as a shelter for civilians. But even if reports of potential co-location by militants and civilians, a violation of international humanitarian law, were substantiated, it would not give Israel permission to ignore “the principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions in attack,” according to the U.N. Human Rights Office.

“The pattern of attacks on shelters leading to verifiably high civilian fatalities, especially in an area that the Israeli military has unilaterally declared safe, suggests a complete disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians and raises grave concerns about the systematic commission of disproportionate attacks or attacks directed at civilians, which are war crimes,” the office said, adding that any attacks directed at humanitarians would amount to a war crime.

On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in Poland that aid workers and humanitarian sites must be protected, “and that’s something we continue to raise with Israel.” The secretary still maintained that Hamas is partly responsible for such attacks because militants are “hiding, taking over and otherwise using these sites from which to conduct its operations.”

Humanitarian workers, especially those who are themselves Palestinian, are under increased danger in Gaza as they work to provide food, water, shelter and medicine to the millions of displaced civilians. UNRWA in particular has long been a target of Israel’s attacks. Hundreds of aid workers have been killed and at least 128 agency-supported schools bombed in Gaza since October 2023.

“Humanitarian staff, premises and operations have been blatantly and unabatedly disregarded since the beginning of the war,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said Wednesday. “The longer impunity prevails, the more international humanitarian law and the Geneva conventions will become irrelevant.”

Since Hamas launched its attack on Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 250 were taken hostage, the Israeli military has retaliated with strikes on Gaza and in the West Bank. Local officials in Gaza estimate that more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in the assaults.

Attempts to reach a cease-fire have repeatedly faltered, and despite the release of more than 100 hostages, Israel estimates 101 remain captive and says dozens have died, according to The Associated Press.