White House Condemns Shelling of Gaza School That Killed 15
The White House condemned the shelling on Wednesday of a United Nations school in Gaza that local authorities estimated killed at least 15 Palestinians sheltering there.
“We are extremely concerned that thousands of internally displaced Palestinians who have been called on by the Israeli military to evacuate their homes are not safe in U.N. designated shelters in Gaza,” White House National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said. “We also condemn those responsible for hiding weapons in United Nations facilities in Gaza.”
The head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which runs the school, said the organization’s initial assessment was that Israeli artillery had hit the building. However, the United States, in its statement condemning the shelling, did not assign responsibility for the attack.
Some 3,300 Palestinians, including many women and children, were taking refuge in the school in Jabalya refugee camp when it came under fire around dawn, UNRWA said.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said militants had fired mortar bombs from the vicinity of the school and troops shot back in response.
UNRWA said on Tuesday it had found a cache of rockets concealed at another Gaza school – the third such discovery since the conflict began. It condemned unnamed militant groups for putting civilians at risk.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO