Israeli airstrikes kill 18 in school, including 6 U.N. workers

Sept. 12 (UPI) -- Israeli airstrikes on a central Gaza school being used to shelter displaced Palestinians killed more than a dozen people, including six United Nations workers.

The strike happened Wednesday, with the Israel Defense Forces saying in a statement that it had conducted a "targeted strike" on "militants operating in a command-and-control complex in the area that formerly served as the Al-Ja'oni school in Nuseirat."

At least 18 Palestinians, including women and children, were killed in the attack and others were injured, the Gaza Civil Defense emergency services said .

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said six of its employees, including the manager of the site, had died in the strike, which was the highest death toll it has suffered in a single incident amid the nearly year-old war.

UNRWA in a statement called on both sides of the conflict -- the Israelis and Hamas -- to "never use schools or areas around them for military or fighting purposes."

"This school has been hit five times since the war began," it said. "It is home to around 12,000 displaced people, mainly women and children."

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres lambasted the attack, stating: "What's happening in Gaza is totally unacceptable.

"These dramatic violations of international humanitarian law need to stop now," he said on X.

Philippe Lazzarini, the UNRWA commissioner-general, repeated his call for a cease-fire in the wake of the attack.

"Humanitarian staff, premises & operations have been blatantly & unabatedly disregarded since the beginning of the war," he said . "The longer impunity prevails, the more international humanitarian law & the Geneva conventions will become irrelevant."

At least 220 of the agency's workers have been killed in Gaza during the war.

Israel and UNRWA, the main humanitarian organization functioning in Gaza, have been feuding amid the war, with the former accusing employees of the latter of being involved with Hamas. It says nine of its employees were involved in Hamas' Oct. 7 attack that killed 1,200 Israelis and ignited the ongoing war.

Following the surfacing of the allegations early in the conflict, UNRWA identified and had the contracts of nine employees terminated. It was not clear if they were the same nine that the IDF said it had identified.

UNRWA, which is one of the U.N.'s largest organizations, has more than 30,000 employees who work in five areas of operations, including the Gaza Strip.

Israel has also leveled accusations that Hamas uses civilian infrastructure, including UNRWA-run schools, as military facilities, command-and-control centers, storage facilities and location to launch attacks from.

Danny Danon, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, responded to the U.N. chief by accusing the intergovernmental organization of condemning Israel "while Hamas continues to use women and children as human shield."

"I suggest you carefully investigate who these terrorists were, what they were doing in the past and what atrocities they were committing when they were eliminated before making statements," he said, accusing the UNRWA dead of being militants without offering proof.

Gaza's Palestinian Ministry of Health, which does not differentiate between civilians and militants, states that 41,118 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed in the war.

Israel says that it takes "numerous measures" to minimize the risk to civilians.