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Teachers and other UN staff in Gaza fear they could become a “target” after an Israeli air strike this week on a school housing displaced people in the blockaded territory, a senior UN official said Saturday.
The Israeli raid on Wednesday on the Al-Jaouni School, which is affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), located in the central Gaza Strip and sheltering displaced people, led to the killing of 18 people, including six UN employees.
This incident is the deadliest to hit a UNRWA facility in more than 11 months of war, and has drawn international condemnation.
“One colleague said they no longer wear the UNRWA vest because they feel it turns them into a target,” Sam Rose, UNRWA’s acting director of operations in Gaza, told AFP on Saturday after visiting the school in Nuseirat camp.
“Colleagues were gathering for a meal after work in one of the classrooms when the strike destroyed part of the building, leaving only a charred pile of reinforced steel and concrete,” he added.
“One of the staff members’ sons brought a meal into the building,” Rose continued, explaining that the group then discussed whether to eat it in the principal’s office before settling on what appeared to be a classroom decorated with pictures of scientists.
“They were eating when the bomb fell,” he stressed.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees announced that at least 220 of its employees were killed in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
UNRWA announced on Friday that one of its employees was killed during an Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank, a first in the region for more than a decade.
