Airstrike Hits School Sheltering Gaza Civilians

Gaza City, Gaza Strip: An apparent Israeli strike Thursday on a school sheltering Gaza residents who evacuated their homes killed and injured "multiple" people, according to the local director of the U.N. agency that is operating the shelter.

The Palestinian ministry of health in Gaza said 10 people had been killed and "a large number" had been wounded at the school in Beit Hanoun, in the northern Gaza Strip.

A spokesman for the Israeli military had no immediate information about the event and said he was looking into the matter.

This was the third time that shelters set up in schools have been struck during the current conflict. The U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which is helping Palestinians displaced by the conflict, said that more than 140,000 residents of Gaza were now staying in 83 schools where it runs shelters.

"We're extremely concerned now that if this trend continues we will see a mass casualty event," said Robert Turner, the director of Gaza operations for the agency, citing two incidents from the Gaza conflict in 2008-09 in which eight people were killed when a shelter was hit and 40 people were killed in a separate strike outside a school.

"It would take just one errant shell into one of these institutions to have major casualties," Turner said "They are packed and the people came there specifically seeking refuge because they feel safer in a U.N. installation."

Turner said he had few details about the latest strike in Beit Hanoun, because when he went to investigate, "we got a hostile reception."

On Wednesday, Turner said, a school with 2,000 people in it in Deir el Balah in the center of this coastal territory was struck in what was believed to be a drone attack. On Tuesday, a boy was injured by an artillery shell at a school in the Mughazi refugee camp, and when U.N. workers went in to investigate - after being told by Israeli authorities they had a two-hour window in which it would be safe to operate - there was more shelling, Turner said, though no one was injured.

"We're concerned that these messages are either not being passed, or if they are being passed they are not being implemented as we would like," he said of coordination between the Israelis charged with civilian protection and the military.

"We're not questioning the good will and hard work of the people" working with the United Nations, he added, "but we're concerned about coordination and translation into action on the ground."

Several people at Beit Hanoun Hospital, one of three facilities where ambulances rushed those injured in the strike, said that they had been staying in the school for up to a week because shelling near their homes was intense, but that food and water at the U.N. facility had been scarce for the past few days.

On Thursday, the residents said, representatives from the International Committee of the Red Cross told them they had to leave the school because the fighting was coming closer, and that they would return with buses to transport them later that afternoon. But as hundreds of people gathered in the school's courtyard to await the buses, at least five artillery shells rained down, they said.

"They were shelling close to our houses, so we moved in with some neighbors," said Nigal Shaybouv, 20. "The shelling came to us there, so we went to the school."

Shaybouv, his pants bloody from a shrapnel wound in his buttocks, said 27 members of his extended family had been staying at the school. A friend came to tell him that four had been killed: Shaybouv's mother, brother, and two aunts.

He and others said that militants had not fired from  the school at Israeli forces. They suspected, however, that Israeli troops had seen a hole the residents punched through a school wall in order to gain access to a neighbor's water supply, and had mistaken it for a sign of fighting.

"If the resistance had come to us, we would have died a long time ago," said Bilal Nassir, suggesting that the presence of militant groups would have brought an earlier Israeli assault. "We had no resistance at all in the area."

Israeli officials have said schools are among the places where militants store and launch rockets. Twice during this conflict rockets have been discovered at UNWRA shelters at schools. Some Israelis have complained that the U.N. agency personnel turned the rockets over to the security services affiliated with Hamas.

Turner acknowledged that they had given the rockets to the Hamas-controlled interior ministry, but he said there had been no one else to call.

With international efforts to broker a cease-fire still unsuccessful, fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas militants continued Thursday, with more rockets launched from Gaza deep into Israel. The Palestinian death toll from Israeli attacks rose to more than 700, many of them civilians, according to the health ministry in Gaza.

The ministry said at least 25 people were believed dead in the village of Khuza'a, where it said two-thirds of the homes have been destroyed and 60 percent of the population has fled. In the neighboring villages of Abasan and Bani Suheila it said 17 people have been killed.

The northern area of the Gaza Strip around Jabaliya also appeared to be a focus of Israeli strikes overnight. A mosque was destroyed and a residential building was flattened. Residents said that seven people were killed there, at least three of them children.

The Israeli military said that two rocket barrages were fired from Gaza in the morning and about five were intercepted over the Tel Aviv area by Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile defense system. Some shrapnel fell in Tel Aviv but there were no reports of serious injuries.

During a visit to Israel, the new British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, laid the blame squarely on Hamas for triggering the current round of violence by "firing hundreds of rockets at Israeli towns and cities indiscriminately and in breach of international humanitarian law."

But in a joint news conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Hammond also said Britain was "gravely concerned by the ongoing heavy level of casualties" and called for a quick agreement on a cease-fire.

Netanyahu said, "The terrorists are firing rockets from schools, from mosques, from hospitals, from heavily civilian populations and we have to try and are doing our best to minimize civilian casualties. But we cannot give our attackers immunity or impunity."

Netanyahu also told Hammond that Israel was grateful that British Airways has continued to fly to Israel over the last few days, as most European carriers had suspended service to Israel in recent days because of the danger from rocket fire.

Other European aviation regulators lifted their blanket recommendation to European airlines Thursday afternoon to avoid flights to Israel. The Federal Aviation Administration in Washington lifted its ban on U.S. carriers flying into and out of Ben-Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv late Wednesday night, saying it was satisfied with the security precautions Israel had taken.

The FAA had urged U.S. airlines to avoid the airport Tuesday after a missile fired from Gaza landed nearby. The agency extended the ban, originally for 24 hours, for a second day early Wednesday.

Israel strongly protested the move, which stranded thousands of travelers headed toward or trying to leave Israel, saying its airspace was well protected. El Al, Israel's national carrier, continued flights throughout the ban.

The European Aviation Safety Agency said Thursday it was recommending that national authorities base decisions on flying to Israel's main airport "on thorough risk assessments, in particular using risk analysis made by operators," The Associated Press reported.