GAZA: The Zionist entity faced international condemnation Thursday after a strike killed 18 people at a school-turned-shelter for displaced Palestinians in war-torn Gaza, where the Zionist military said it targeted Hamas militants. The attack flattened part of the UN-run Al-Jawni school in Nuseirat on Wednesday, leaving only a charred heap of rebar and concrete.

“For the fifth time, Zionist forces bombed the UNRWA-run Al-Jawni School, killing 18 citizens,” Gaza civil defense spokesperson Mahmud Bassal wrote on Telegram, referring to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. UNRWA later said six of its staff had been killed in two Zionist strikes on the school and its surroundings, calling it the highest death toll among its team in a single incident.

“Among those killed was the manager of the UNRWA shelter and other team members providing assistance to displaced people,” it said on X. “Schools and other civilian infrastructure must be protected at all times, they are not a target.” UN chief Antonio Guterres branded the strike “totally unacceptable”. His condemnation was echoed by Zionist ally Germany, which said “humanitarian aid workers must never be victims of rockets”.

Jordan and the European Union also criticized the attack, while the Zionist entity’s main backer the United States called on it to protect humanitarian sites. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said he was “outraged” by the deaths and that the strikes showed a “disregard of the basic principles” of international humanitarian law. US Secretary of State Blinken said: “We need to see humanitarian sites protected, and that’s something that we continue to raise with (the Zionist entity)”.

Zionist military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said UNRWA had not provided the names of its killed workers, “despite repeated requests”. In response, UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma said the agency was “not aware of any such requests”, that it provided the Zionist entity each year with a list of its staff and that it “called repeatedly” on the Zionist entity and Palestinian fighters “to never use civilian facilities for military or fighting purposes”.

She said the agency was “not in a position to determine” if the school had been used by Hamas for military purposes, but UNRWA had “repeatedly called for independent investigations” into “these very serious claims”. Survivors of the strike scrambled to recover bodies and belongings from the rubble, saying they had to step over “shredded limbs”. “I can hardly stand up,” a man holding a plastic bag of human remains told AFP. “We’ve been going through hell for 340 days now, what we’ve seen over these days, we haven’t even seen it in Hollywood movies, now we’re seeing it in Gaza.”

UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini said after the school strike that at least 220 members of the agency’s staff had been killed in the war. “Endless & senseless killing, day after day,” he posted on X. “Humanitarian staff, premises & operations have been blatantly & unabatedly disregarded since the beginning of the war.”

Across Gaza, many school buildings have been repurposed to shelter displaced families, with the vast majority of the territory’s 2.4 million people repeatedly uprooted by the war. In Gaza City, civil defense spokesman Bassal said two strikes in the Zeitun neighborhood killed seven people — including two children. Later, he said two people were killed in the Jabalia camp. Medical sources said five people were killed in strikes on the Khan Yunis area.

The bloodshed shows no signs of abating despite months of ceasefire negotiations mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States. A Hamas delegation met Qatari and Egyptian mediators in Doha on Wednesday, the Palestinian Islamists said, though there was no indication of a breakthrough. The Zionist offensive has killed at least 41,118 people in Gaza, mostly women and children.

The WHO announced Thursday the largest medical evacuation from Gaza since Oct 7 and said at least a quarter of those hurt in the war had “life-changing injuries”. The World Health Organization said that it along with partners on Wednesday evacuated 97 sick and severely injured patients from the war-ravaged Palestinian territory to Abu Dhabi for specialized care. “This was the largest evacuation yet from Gaza since October 2023,” Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO’s representative for the Palestinian territories, told reporters.

The patients, including 45 children, were suffering from a wide range of diseases like cancer, as well as serious trauma and other injuries. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus hailed the success of a “highly complex operation... despite severe operational challenges and insecurity”. The patients and 155 companions had first been transferred from four locations across Gaza to a hospital in the center of the territory before being flown to Abu Dhabi. – Agencies