Israeli army NOW *admits* it fired into UN school refuge, but denies anyone killed despite reports [View all]

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Last edited Sun Jul 27, 2014, 04:17 PM - Edit history (5)

from AFP:

The Israeli army on Sunday confirmed firing a mortar round into a Gaza UN shelter where 15 people died on Thursday, but denied killing anyone at the site.

Briefing journalists on the findings of an internal military enquiry into the incident at a UN school in Beit Hanun, spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner said militants "in the vicinity" of the school fired mortar rounds and anti-tank rockets at Israeli forces . . .

"A single errant mortar (round) landed in the courtyard of the school," he said. "The courtyard was completely empty" at the time of the incident, he added.

"We reject the claims that were made by various officials immediately following the incident, that people were killed in the school premises as a result of (Israeli army) operational activity," he added.

An AFP photographer who went to the scene saw blood spattered on the ground and Gaza emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said 15 people died in the blast and at least another 200 people were injured . . .


Mohammed Shinbary comforts his daughter Mahasin, 7, who was injured after an attack on a United Nations school. Photo: New York Times

read: http://www.news.net/article/1679789/Top+Stories?referid=302

related:

WaPo: At least 16 killed in attack on Gaza school, sparking massive protests in West Bank

GAZA CITY — It was one of the worst scenes so far in a war that has put civilians in the cross hairs. An elementary school packed with hundreds of Palestinian evacuees seeking shelter under U.N. protection came under heavy fire Thursday, leaving 16 people dead and more than 100 wounded, including women, children and infants.

A senior Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, said Thursday night that “there was a possibility” shells from Israeli forces­ struck the U.N.-run school in the Gaza Strip. But he also suggested that Hamas mortars or rockets could have been responsible. The Israeli army was investigating the incident “to see what exactly caused the deaths and injuries,” he said.

Witnesses, still shaking from the experience, said the shelter was filled with families who had fled their homes to escape more than two weeks of heavy shelling in the northern Gaza Strip.

As fighting raged around them Thursday morning, a series of explosions first struck the courtyard and then the school, which is run by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, known as UNRWA.

read: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/israel-hamas-show-no-signs-of-bowing-to-pressure-for-truce/2014/07/24/90213d90-1305-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed_story.html

Reuters says:

"Laila Al-Shinbari, a woman who was at school when it was shelled, told Reuters families had gathered in the courtyard expecting to be evacuated shortly in a Red Cross convoy.

" 'All of us sat in one place when suddenly four shells landed on our heads ... Bodies were on the ground, (there was) blood and screams. My son is dead and all my relatives are wounded including my other kids,' she wept."

‘Appalled’ by attack on UN-run school in Gaza, UN Chief Ban urges halt to all fighting



Sergey Ponomarev for N.Y Times – Relatives of a boy killed Thursday in explosions at a UN school sheltering Gaza residents grieving over his body at a hospital.


Inside the Gaza schoolhouse massacre http://thebea.st/1nLru8X

http://cdn.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/2014/07/26/inside-the-gaza-schoolyard-massacre/jcr:content/image.crop.800.500.jpg/1406403137372.cached.jpg

BEIT HANOUN, Gaza –

There is no respite from the destruction as I drive into the UNRWA compound. Children’s paintings on the white walls are pockmarked with shrapnel. One shell blast in the middle of the courtyard has demolished the grey brick cobblestones. A second blast hit near the school’s garden, demolishing flowers. Random shoes and torn mattresses litter the ground along with half-drunk bottles of water and soda. The signs of a panicked and traumatic attempted escape from the school are everywhere. Here are shards of splintered writing desks. There are scattered pages from notebooks that rustle listlessly in the dust.

The two most deadly blasts hit classrooms on the second and third floor of the school and even days later the sulphur smell of explosives still hangs in the air. The rooms are blackened and charred; light pours in through shattered windows and shell holes in the walls. Desks are piled neatly in the corner where they’d been moved to make more room for people seeking shelter. Broken glass crunches under my feet as I walk through the school. In some rooms the floor is caked with dry blood.

A few of the survivors have returned to look for belongings. “This is the first time I came back since the shelling, thank God,” says 27-year-old Bassem Adwan. He looks much older than his age, with heavy bags under his eyes and so much plaster in his hair and beard that he seems to be prematurely gray. He looks through me as we talk, as if he could still see in front of him what he witnessed on Thursday. He starts to describe people who were scrambling for cover from the incoming shells, but, of course, there is nothing in a school that stops artillery. He looks around. “I’m afraid,” he says as he loads a hotplate into the back of a horse-drawn cart . . .

The shelling of Beit Hanoun was not the first time an UNRWA building was hit in this conflict. There were three attacks on other U.N. schools-turned-shelters before Thursday’s carnage, according to the agency’s spokesperson, Christopher Gunness, and 80 other UNRWA facilities have been damaged in this war.

Gunness says that U.N. investigation teams were fired on and had to turn back when they tried to reach the Beit Hanoun school on Friday. That incident echoed a similar attempt on Tuesday by the UN to investigate the shelling the day before of a girls’ school-turned-shelter in the Megazi refugee camp . . .

read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/26/inside-the-gaza-schoolyard-massacre.html