United Nations leaders on Thursday accused Israel of violating international humanitarian law, saying that six of its workers were among 18 people reported killed by an airstrike on a school in central Gaza sheltering displaced Palestinians.
“What’s happening in Gaza is totally unacceptable,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a post on X hours after Wednesday’s attack on Al-Jaouni school in the Nuseirat refugee camp. “These dramatic violations of international humanitarian law need to stop now.”
The Israeli military said it was targeting Hamas militants and later said several of the U.N. workers killed were members of Hamas, without providing evidence.
Children were among at least 18 people killed in the airstrike, Gaza’s Civil Defense agency said in a statement, adding that it was the fifth time Israeli forces had targeted the facility during Israel's almost yearlong offensive in Gaza.
The U.N. Relief and Works Agency, known as UNRWA, which has been operating the school as shelter for displaced Palestinians, said it had been sheltering more than 12,000 people.
The manager of the shelter was among the six workers killed, it said, adding that it was the “highest death toll among our staff in a single incident.”
The Israel Defense Forces said it had carried out a “precise strike” on the school targeting Hamas members, in a statement posted to Telegram on Wednesday. It said the militant group was using the compound as a “command and control center” to plan and execute attacks against Israeli troops, without providing evidence.
It added that “numerous steps” were taken to mitigate the risk of harm to civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance and additional intelligence.
In a later statement on X, IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said it had asked UNRWA to provide the names of the workers killed, but had received no response.
He added that a military inquiry suggested that “a significant number” of those killed, as named in the media and social media, were “Hamas terrorist operatives who took part in terrorist activities against the citizens of the State of Israel and IDF troops.”
Asked about those allegations by NBC News, Juliette Touma, UNRWA’s communications director, said in an email that Israeli authorities had “not requested UNRWA to provide them with the list of staff killed in yesterday’s attack on the UNRWA school.”
“The names that appear on today’s statement from the Israeli Army have not been flagged to us before by the Israeli authorities in previous occasions prior to today,” she said. “UNRWA shares the lists of all its staff with the host governments and in the context of the West Bank and Gaza also with the state of Israel as the occupying power.”
“Schools and civilian infrastructure must be protected at all time. Gaza is no different,” she said. “We have called repeatedly on parties to the conflict, including the Israeli Forces and Palestinian Armed Groups including Hamas, to never use civilian facilities for military or fighting purposes.”
She added that UNRWA was “not in a position to determine” whether the school hit by the strike or others “have been used for that very purpose.”
A spokesman for Hamas' government media office shared a list of names just after 4 p.m. local time (9 a.m. ET) Thursday in a post on X that it said identified the six UNRWA workers killed. Around 45 minutes later, the IDF shared a statement with a list of names of people it said it had confirmed were Hamas militants killed in the strike.
At least three of the people named by the IDF as Hamas militants appeared to also be on the Hamas media office's list, albeit with slightly different spellings.
The IDF did not provide evidence for its allegations. NBC News has reached out to the IDF and UNRWA for further comment.
Video captured by NBC News’ crew on the ground in Gaza shortly after the strike showed Palestinians carrying the dead and injured.
At one point, a man can be seen carrying what appears to be a small body covered in a white shroud drenched in blood.
Notebooks, clothes and tins of food lay scattered on the ground, spattered with what appeared to be blood.
More than 40,900 people have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, according to health officials in the enclave. Israel launched its military offensive after 1,200 people were killed and around 250 others were taken hostage during Hamas' multipronged attacks that day, according to officials in the country.
