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The agency says it cannot “verify” the Israeli Army’s claims about the alleged presence of Hamas members in the center
June 6 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) denounced this Thursday the bombing carried out by Israel against one of its schools in the Nuseirat refugee camp, in the center of the Gaza Strip, which has left at least 40 dead, and has stressed that the building housed 6,000 displaced people at the time of the attack.
“Another horrible day in Gaza. Another UNRWA school converted into a shelter attacked,” said the agency’s commissioner general, Philippe Lazzarini, who stated in a message on his account on the social network X that the center has been attacked by Israeli forces “without prior notice to the displaced or to UNRWA.
“The claims that armed groups could have been inside the shelter are shocking, but we do not have the capacity to verify them,” he said, in response to claims by the Israeli Army that the target of the bombing would have been alleged members of the Movement. of Islamic Resistance (Hamas) present in the facilities.
Thus, Lazzarini insisted that “attacking or using United Nations buildings for military purposes is a flagrant disregard for International Humanitarian Law” and added that “UN personnel, facilities and operations must be protected at all times.” , while recalling that more than 180 UNRWA buildings and more than 450 displaced people have died in attacks against these facilities since the beginning of Israel’s offensive against Gaza.
“UNRWA shares the coordinates of all its facilities, including this school, with the Israeli Army and other parties to the conflict. Attacking UN facilities or using them for military purposes cannot become the new norm,” Lazzarini said. “This must stop and all those responsible must be held accountable,” he added.
The Gaza authorities, controlled by Hamas, have put the death toll at 40 – a figure placed at at least 35 by the UNRWA commissioner general -, including fourteen children, and have stated that the bombing has also left 74 injured, including 23 minors. Thus, they have stressed that “the Israeli occupation Army has repeatedly committed these massacres in a brutal manner and even though it knew of the presence of tens of thousands of displaced people in these centers.”
For this reason, they have said that these actions “are part of a genocide” and have reiterated their condemnation of the United States’ “total support” for Israel, which “carries out its crimes in an organized manner.” “We hold the Israeli occupation and the US Administration fully responsible for these crimes against humanity and ask everyone to condemn these massacres, genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip,” they stressed.
For its part, the Israeli Army has confirmed the bombing of the school and has argued that it housed “Hamas terrorists” inside, among whom there would be members of the forces that carried out a series of attacks against Israeli territory on October 7. , which left nearly 1,200 dead and about 240 kidnapped.
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