Killing of UN staff in Israeli strike on Gaza school is appalling, says Lammy

UN agency for Palestinian refugees says six of its employers among dead in strike which killed 18 people

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, has described the deaths of six workers in an Israeli strike on a UN-run school in Gaza as “appalling”.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said its employees have been killed in the strike in central Gaza. The UN school, housing about 12,000 displaced people, mostly women and children, has been attacked at least five times since Israel launched an air and ground offensive in Gaza last October, Unrwa said.

“Reports of six UNRWA staff members being killed in an Israeli strike are appalling,” Mr Lammy said. “My thoughts are with their families and all those who continue to carry out lifesaving work. Aid workers must be able to do their jobs safely.”

Wednesday's attack on the al-Jaouni Preparatory Boys School in the Nuseirat refugee camp was the deadliest ever for its staff, Unrwa, said. The Civil Defence agency in Hamas-run Gaza said a total of 18 people had been killed, with a number of others injured.

The senior deputy director of Unrwa affairs in Gaza, Sam Rose, told Al Jazeera that staff at the agency are “despairing”.

“Staff in the offices are in shock. The scale and the rapidity of the incidents are just too difficult for us to get our head around sometimes,” he said.

The Israeli military claimed its strike targeted a Hamas command and control centre in Nuseirat as part of its war inside Gaza. Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of using civilian buildings and infrastructure in Gaza, during the 11 months of conflict.

Civil defence teams and civilians carry out search and rescue work after an Israeli attack on a UN school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza (Anadolu via Getty)

UNRWA director Philippe Lazzarini said: “Humanitarian staff, premises and operations have been blatantly and unabatedly disregarded since the start of the war”. In July, 16 people were killed in a strike at the school, according to Palestinian officials. The Israeli military said it had targeted several structures at the school used by Hamas fighters.

UN Secretary General António Guterres expressed his outrage at the strike, saying: “What’s happening in Gaza is totally unacceptable.”

“These dramatic violations of international humanitarian law need to stop now”.

Responding to that condemnation, Israel's ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, said: “It is unconscionable that the UN continues to condemn Israel in its just war against terrorists, while Hamas continues to use women and children as human shields,” he said, external.

The war in Gaza was triggered when Hamas launched a bloody attack inside Israel on 7 October, killing around 1,200 people and taking 250 hostages. In response, Israel has bombarded Gaza from the air and ground. More than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in the offensive, health officials in the strip have said. It has also displaced nearly 90 per cent of the territory’s 2.3 million population, many multiple times.

Civil defence teams and civilians search for survivors after an Israeli airstrike on a school in central Gaza (Anadolu via Getty)

The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in August that 280 aid workers were killed in 33 countries in 2023, and this year “may be on track for an even deadlier outcome”. It added that more than half of last year’s deaths occurred in the first three months of the Israeli war on Gaza.

In another attack on Wednesday, a suspected Israeli atrike on a home near the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, killed 11 people, including six brothers and sisters aged 21 months to 21 years.

In the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers allegedly conducted raids in several towns backed by airstrikes, killing at least eight people. One airstrike killed five people the military said were militants threatening its troops. A second strike on a car killed at least three people, Gaza’s health ministry said.