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Twin strikes claim 37 lives in Gaza as Israel widens war
The UN Relief and Works Agency accuses Israel of violating international law with the attack on the school
Jerusalem/Tel Aviv: Twin strikes on a United Nations (UN) school and the main public market in Gaza City claimed the lives of 37 people, Palestinians said, as Israel expanded its three-week-old offensive in the territory.
The UN Relief and Works Agency accused Israel of violating international law with the attack on the school, which it said was sheltering 3,300 people who had sought refuge there from the fighting. The Israeli army said troops were responding to fire launched at them from the vicinity. It also said it was looking into the report of an air strike on the market.
The attacks came as the Israeli military pushed deeper into the Hamas-controlled territory, according to military spokesman Brigadier-General Moti Almoz, in an interview with Army Radio. Defence minister Moshe Ya’alon said on Wednesday his army is ready to broaden its incursion further as it hunts for tunnels militants built to slip into Israel.
The third major showdown between the Israeli military and the Islamist Hamas movement in less than six years has killed more than 1,300 Palestinians, most of them civilians, and wounded about 7,200 more. Fifty-nine people have died on the Israeli side, including three soldiers killed on Wednesday, and three civilians. Obstacles to a truce include Israel’s demand that Gaza be disarmed and Hamas’s insistence that Israel end its blockade of the enclave, initiated in 2006 and joined by Egypt.
Israel, like the US and European Union (EU), labels Hamas a terrorist organization and says it uses civilians as human shields.
UN Refuge
Wednesday’s attack on the school was the second deadly strike on a UN refuge facility in a week.
“The precise location of the Jabalia Elementary Girls School and the fact that it was housing thousands of internally displaced people was communicated to the Israeli army 17 times, to ensure its protection,” Pierre Kraehenbuehl, the commissioner-general of the UN Relief and Works Agency, said in a statement. “I condemn in the strongest possible terms this serious violation of international law by Israeli forces.”
While the UN allegation against Israel doesn’t have legal implications, “the moment Israel is accused of violating international law, it increases international pressure on Israel to end the war,” said Robbie Sabel, a professor of international law and political science at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Disarmament Demanded
The military said its preliminary investigation of the school attack indicated that troops fired in the direction of the UN facility after mortar shells were launched at them from the vicinity. The incident is still being reviewed, the military said.
Kraehenbuehl said it was too early to give a confirmed official death toll. Earlier, both al-Qedra, the Gaza health ministry spokesman, and Adnan Abu Hasna, an UNRWA spokesman, said 20 people were killed.
The Palestinians accuse Israel of shelling a UN refuge in Beit Hanoun last week; Israel has said it wasn’t responsible.
As an inner cabinet met to discuss how the campaign will proceed, Ya’alon, the defence minister, said his country wasn’t “limiting ourselves by time or place,” according to an emailed statement from his office. “We will reach every place we know where tunnels or tunnel shafts are located, even if that requires us to push deeper.”
Truce Efforts
Israel’s stated reason for beginning a ground operation on 17 July was to identify and destroy the underground passages built by militants. Eleven Israeli soldiers have been killed in clashes with infiltrators.
Israel has struck about 4,100 targets inside Gaza since the fighting began on 8 July, the army said in an emailed statement. Overnight, more than 75 targets were struck, including five mosques it said were used to conceal weapons and house access shafts to infiltration tunnels. Militants have fired almost 3,000 rockets and mortars during the conflict, the military said.
Israel’s financial markets have shrugged off the violence, with the shekel little changed on Wednesday at 3.4290 per dollar and the benchmark TA-25 index advancing 1.4% since the conflict began.
Efforts to end the violence have come up short, defying appeals by President Barack Obama and UN chief Ban Ki-moon for an immediate cessation of the hostilities. A bid by the US, UN and Egypt to broker a truce last week failed to win agreement on anything deeper than an hours-long humanitarian halt over the weekend.
US secretary of state John Kerry, who led those talks, told reporters on Tuesday he’s still in regular contact with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as truce efforts continue. Bloomberg
David Lerman and Nicole Gaouette in Washington and Calev Ben-David in Jerusalem also contributed to this story.
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First Published:30 Jul 2014, 10:27 AM IST
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