TEL AVIV – INTERNATIONAL – Wednesday was another day of deadly violence in the Gaza Strip.
Answering the call after Israeli air strikes in Gaza. Inside emergency workers find a man trying to put out the fire. They also found a dead body.
Israeli shelling and air strikes killing at least 90 people, bring the death toll here close to 1300.
Children are among the injured — a reality their loved ones struggle to comprehend. And it wasn;’t just rockets rainig down on Gaza. At one point — a flurry of leaflets —- dropped by the Israeli military.
Written in Arabic, they warn locals about impending military action — urging residents to turn in Hamas fighters and report weapons caches. Most Gazans are contemptuous of the message. Gaza resident Hamdi al Harazin states “This doesn’t mean anything to me. It doesn’t shake me one bit.”
Shortly after Wednesday’s attacks, Israel announced a four hour ceasefire.
The United Nations expressed concern again, and the desire for both sides to come to the table for peace talks and a solution.
United Nations school serving as a shelter for Palestinians in Gaza was hit by shells this morning, killing children, senior UN officials strongly condemned the attacks and warned against the targeting of civilians.
“This is an affront to all of us, a source of universal shame. Today the world stands disgraced,” said the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) Commissioner General, Pierre Krähenbühl.
According to an initial assessment, Israeli artillery on at least three occasions hit an UNRWA school where 3,300 people were seeking refuge. While the agency says it is too early to provide a death toll, there are multiple civilian deaths and injuries, including to women and children, and to UNRWA guards trying to protect the site.
“The precise location of the Jabalia Elementary Girls School and the fact that it was housing thousands of internally displaced people was communicated to the Israeli army seventeen times, to ensure its protection,” Mr. Krähenbühl said, “the last being at ten to nine last night, just hours before the fatal shelling.”
“I call on the international community to take deliberate international political action to put an immediate end to the continuing carnage,” he underscored.On Tuesday, a compound housing the Office of the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO) and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) was hit five times over a period of one hour, according to UN sources.
FILES: DAILY MOTION / REUTERS
