The United Nations Children’s Refugee Program in Gaza after the Nuseirat School Strike: a New York Times Report on a Gaza Hospital Visitation
The United Nations is giving shelter to 6,000 displaced Palestinians at a school compound, according to Philippe Lazzarini.
“Claims that armed groups may have been inside the shelter are shocking. We are however unable to verify these claims,” he said in a statement on the social media platform X.
There was blood and rubble in the aftermath of the strike. Two boys with head and leg injuries remained in the school compound. The United Nations tried to repair a door and windows of the compound for families who are still living there, while children gathered wood from among the rubble to make firewood.
The number of people killed in the strike in Nuseirat remained unclear. Gazan health officials have given death tolls ranging from 41 to 46. There were 18 children and 9 women among the people taken to the Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
The few Gaza hospitals that remain in operation have often been overwhelmed by the numbers of dead and wounded, while experiencing sporadic telecommunications blackouts. A New York Times reporter who visited Al Aqsa hospital on Thursday after the Nuseirat strike saw medics pushing through crowds of people to reach operating rooms.
Israel’s attack on a central Gaza refugee camp during the second round of the war: A military official says that Israel is using only the most advanced munitions, not the most effective
“Israel is using the most advanced, precise and effective bombs the U.S. produces like a cudgel,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss Israel’s conduct.
Israel’s army said it was targeting a group of militants inside two classrooms at a U.N. school in Nuseirat, a central Gaza refugee camp. The director of Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital stated that the strike killed at least 32 people, including seven children.
Some families have found a home in the school. NPR saw a body bag labeled as containing the remains of five children at the hospital’s mortuary.
Wes Bryant, the former Air Force official, said the U.S. military would have most likely called off such a strike where militants were holed up in a U.N. school housing displaced civilians because the estimated number of civilian casualties would be high.
What struck me most about these strikes by the IDF. [Israeli military], in which large numbers of civilians have again been killed, is that they are using munitions intended to be both precision and low collateral damage — but they are not employing them in a manner in which those qualities are applied,” said Bryant, a retired master sergeant and former special operations joint terminal attack controller in the elite special warfare branch of the U.S. Air Force.
The Israeli military declined NPR’s request for comment on the kind of munitions used, but identified the names of nine men it said were militants killed in the strike.
The U.N. school in Nuseirat is sheltering families that had been displaced multiple times: those who fled north Gaza to Rafah in south Gaza at the start of the war, and who then fled Israel’s offensive on Rafah to the U.N. school.
As soon as word of a big strike reached the facility, a designated official was prepared to receive ambulances from Nuseirat and begin to register the dead and wounded. “We look for any markers that we could use to identify the person,” he said.
Israeli troops continued the offensive in Rafah, Gaza, a source of mass casualty at the Al Aqsa hospital
Israeli troops also continued their offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where the Israeli military has seized much of the border area between the city and Egypt. The Israeli military said it was carrying out “intelligence-based, targeted operations,” without providing further details.
The military said that it had targeted 20 to 30 extremists in the strike, which was used to set up three classrooms as a base. The international criticism focused on the toll of civilians.
The Israeli army said its forces had continued to operate in other areas of central Gaza, including Bureij, Deir al balh and others, and that they had killed many Palestinians and destroyed their tunnels.
“We’re seeing that Hamas still exists, and they still have capabilities above and beneath ground,” Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman, told reporters on Thursday, describing ongoing attacks by “smaller cells” of militants using rocket-propelled grenades, small arms and booby traps.
On Thursday, Hamas militants emerged from a tunnel near Rafah, just a few hundred feet from Israeli territory, in an attempt to launch an attack inside the country, the Israeli military said. Israeli drone and tank fire aimed at the militants killed three, according to the military, and an Israeli soldier was also killed in the firefight.
The conflicting information over the death toll and the identity of the victims has made it difficult for the Al Aqsa hospital’s mortuary official to accurately document mass casualty events.
