Stop The Horror: UN Condemns Israeli Attacks on Schools

The UN Human Rights Office condemns the increasing frequency of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) strikes on schools where hundreds of thousands of forcibly displaced Palestinians have sought shelter, conducted with apparent disregard for the high rate of civilian fatalities.

In the latest of such strikes, at around 0430 hours this morning during dawn prayer, a mosque inside Al Tabae’en School was struck by the IDF at least three times with an initial report of at least 93 Palestinians killed, including 11 children and 6 women. The majority of fatalities appear to have been inside the mosque performing their prayers. Additionally, dozens of others were reportedly seriously injured, with the majority being children, women, and older people.

This is at least the 21st strike on a school, each serving as a shelter, that the UN Human Rights Office has recorded since 4 July. These strikes have resulted in at least 274 fatalities, including women and children.

Despite IDF statements that all measures are taken to avoid civilian harm, the repeated strikes on IDP shelters in areas to which the populations have been forced to move, and the consistent and predictable impact on civilians, suggest a failure to strictly comply with obligations required by International Humanitarian Law (IHL), including the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precautions in attack.

Furthermore, these systematic attacks on schools came in the context where more than 90 per cent of Gaza’s population has been displaced while the Israeli military continues detonating residential buildings and restricting the entry and distribution of humanitarian assistance. IDPs face indescribable horror after 10 months of hostilities, including multiple forced displacements, the rapid spread of diseases, and ongoing denial of access to the basic necessities of life. For many, schools are the last resort to find some shelter and possible access to food and water.

In most of the incidents, the Israeli military asserts that the schools were used by Palestinian armed groups and that they took measures to reduce civilian harm. While the co-location by armed groups of military objectives with civilians or the use of the presence of civilians with the objective of shielding a military objective from attack constitute violations of IHL, it does not negate Israel’s obligation to comply strictly with IHL, including the principles of proportionality, distinction and precaution when carrying out military operations. Israel, as the occupying power, is obliged to provide the population it has forcibly displaced with basic humanitarian needs, including safe shelter.

ENDS

For more information and media requests, please contact:

UN Human Rights office at [email protected]

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Complicity!

Sometimes, it is said that a picture is worth more than a thousand words!

Look at this one!

On 9 of August, 2024 the US through the Joe Biden administration announces that it will provide $3.5 billion in military aid to Israel.

On 10 August, the following day Israeli warplanes strikes a school in Gaza’s Daraj neigbourhood killing over 100 people while performing the dawn prayers.

The school was hit by three 2000-pound missiles that were also provided by the USA.

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Israel is Losing Parts of its North

Head of the Higher Galilee Council Giora Zaltz stated, Saturday, Hezbollah’s military operations in the north of Israel are becoming more deadly and powerful and the level of security in these northern regions on the Lebanese border is deteriorating.

Zaltz mocked the government’s handling of the security situation in the north in an interview on the official Israeli channel, Kan,  saying the Netanyahu government discovered in recent weeks there is an enemy on the northern border called Hezbollah, and is waiting for its response to the assassination of Commander Foad Shukr in the southern suburb of Beirut.

He pointed out the situation here is deteriorating from bad to worse, as sirens sound daily because of drones and missiles by Hezbollah on this area, adding there are dozens of destroyed homes, thousands of burned dunams, and there are dead and wounded among the soldiers and settlers, and the fact that more than 100,000 settlers who have been evacuated here:

“We are now without any vital services such as health, banks, educational systems, and others,” he stressed.

Losing parts of the north

Zaltz pointed out Israel is losing parts of the north whether it be settlements, paralyzed economy, and paralyzed education, calling for a changing in the rules and working on a clear strategy to return the Israeli settlers back to the Galilee.

An earlier report aired by the Israeli Channel 12 stated the Israeli settlers have no future horizon, are desperate for news that barely reaches them, and they do not know when they will return to their homes as many said.

Psychologically trauma

Israeli newspaper Maariv revealed in the past few days, there has been a significant increase in the number of calls to psychological treatment centers in the northern regions, following the drone attacks and rockets launching from Lebanon on the western Galilee region.

Director of the Social Development Dept Uri Charles Friedland said that there has been a significant increase in the number of recorded calls to psychological treatment centers as the escalation of security incidents continue

Friedland explained the Department “is working on three main pillars: Individual care, community support, and rehabilitating authorities in the field of mental health in emergency situations.”

The Israeli media previously revealed an increase in the number of psychological injuries among settlers, admitting they collapsing psychologically, and that a number of officers and soldiers committed suicide after the events of 7 October, 2023 according to Jo.24.

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Al Tabi’een Massacre Aims to Force Palestinians to Leave Gaza

Khalil Al-Hayya, Deputy Head of Hamas in Gaza, stated the Israeli massacre in Al-Tabi’een school is part of a deliberate campaign to exterminate the Palestinian people.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Al-Hayya emphasized the Israeli occupation is intent on forcing Palestinians out of Gaza through continuous, brutal assaults as reported in Al Quds News Network.

Al-Hayya also highlighted that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received the green light from the US during his recent visit to Washington, which has remained silent in the face of ongoing atrocities. He called on the United Nations Security Council to hold an emergency meeting to stop the Zionist massacres against civilians.

According to Al-Hayya, the majority of those killed in the Israeli attacks are women and children, and there is no justification for targeting innocent civilians. He called for decisive international, Arab, and Islamic action to compel Israel to cease its crimes, including measures such as closing embassies and withdrawing ambassadors.

He reaffirmed Hamas’s commitment to resisting the occupation and defending the Palestinian people by all means available.

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Israel Kills 100 People at Morning Prayers

More than 100 Palestinians were killed and dozens injured, Saturday morning, after the Israeli occupation forces bombed the “Al-Tabi’een” school, which houses displaced people in the Al-Daraj neighborhood east of Gaza City.

Local sources reported that the occupation warplanes bombed the school while Palestinians were performing the dawn prayer, and they were specifically targeted after the Takbeer of the dawn prayer.

Eyewitness reports says the limbs – arms, hands, feet and heads of those performing prayers were scattered around the school’s prayer hall in what is described as one of the worst massacres committed by the Israeli army yet.

The Civil Defense said that the bodies of citizens caught fire as a result of the Israeli bombing of the school, noting that the crews are trying to control the fire to retrieve the bodies of the martyrs and rescue the wounded but it’s a difficult and painful exercise.

Reports say the four-storey school was hit by three missiles each weighing 2000 pounds according to Al Jazeera. The prayer hall which was at the bottom of the building was itself hit by a devastating missile with blood spluttering everywhere.

Director of Ambulance and Emergency in the Gaza Strip described the massacre as a heinous crime, while the spokesman for the Civil Defense in the Gaza Strip confirmed that the Israeli bombing of the school led to the martyrdom of 90% of the displaced people there.

In the first response from the Israeli occupation army, the Air Force confirmed that it targeted the school because it was used by the resistance as a headquarters, which is the excuse that the occupation uses every time it commits a massacre. Reporters say this is an outright lie.

About 350 families were sheltering at the school amounting to around 1000 people. It recently received dozens of displaced persons from the town of Beit Hanoun, after they were forced by the occupation to leave their homes for the safe area.

According to the Civil Defense, the Israeli airforce used American-made missiles that reach high temperatures of up to 7,000 degrees Celsius, causing bodies to melt and fires to ignite.

All the martyrs are scattered remains, and the majority of injuries are to the upper body (head and chest), with burns of the first and second degrees, in addition to limb amputations, according to the administration of the Baptist Hospital.

This is not the only school targeted; the occupation targeted five schools in northern Gaza last week, according to the Civil Defense.

The Baptist Hospital is the only one dealing with injury cases in Gaza City after the occupation destroyed Al-Shifa Hospital and rendered 25 hospitals and medical centers out of service, according to the Ministry of Health.

The Israeli occupation forces continue their aggression on the Gaza Strip, by land, air and sea, since October 7, 2023, which resulted in the martyrdom of 39,699 Palestinians, the majority of whom are children and women, and the injury of 91,722 others, in an incomplete toll, as thousands of victims are still under the rubble and on the roads, and ambulance and rescue crews cannot reach them.

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