Israel defends strike on school that UNRWA says killed 6 of its staff

The UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA said six of its staffers were killed after two airstrikes hit a school in central Gaza on Wednesday, marking what it said was the highest death toll among its staff in a single incident.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that a lack of accountability for the killing of UN staff and humanitarian aid workers in Gaza was "totally unacceptable".

The Hamas-run government media office said the Israeli strike on the Al Jaouni School in Nuseirat, central Gaza - the fifth on the center since last October - killed at least 18 people, including UNRWA staff members.

But the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) responded by describing the operation as a "precise strike on terrorists." The IDF also insisted that UNRWA had refused to release the names of those killed, "despite repeated requests".

UNRWA's full name is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees and the agency's declared mission is to "support the relief and human development of Palestinian refugees."

Israel has argued repeatedly that UNRWA's neutrality is compromised. A UN investigation in August found that nine UNRWA employees "may have" been involved in the October 7 attack and no longer work at the agency. 

In a statement about the strikes on X, UNRWA said: "Among those killed was the manager of the UNRWA shelter and other team members providing assistance to displaced people."

It added: "This school has been hit five times since the war began. It is home to around 12,000 displaced people, mainly women and children…..schools and other civilian infrastructure must be protected at all times, they are not a target."

The Israeli military says it takes steps to reduce the risk of harm to civilians and that at least a third of the Palestinian fatalities in Gaza are militants. It accuses Hamas of using Palestinian civilians as human shields, which Hamas denies.

An Al Jazeera reporter at the site described a "tremendous amount of destruction" at the school. Abu Azzoum reported: "We can see huge holes in the wall, and we can see people are looking for anything they can salvage after the destruction of this UN-run shelter. The scale of destruction is unprecedented."

Abu Azzoum said the school was "hit at a time when people were waiting for food." 

Responding on X, IDF international spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani defended the operation. He wrote: "With the direction of IDF and ISA intelligence, the IAF conducted a precise strike on terrorists who were operating inside a command and control center embedded within a compound that previously served as the Al Jaouni School in the area of Nuseirat in central Gaza.

"Upon receiving reports claiming that local Palestinian UNRWA workers were killed as a result of the strike, the IDF requested that the agency provide details and names of the workers, in order to thoroughly review the claim. To date, no answers have been provided by UNRWA despite repeated requests."

Shoshani added that an IDF inquiry suggested that "a significant number of the names that have appeared in the media and on social networks are Hamas terrorist operatives who took part in terrorist activities" against Israel. 

The war was triggered on October 7 when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Israel's subsequent assault on Gaza has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to the enclave's health ministry.

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