After nine months of war in the Gaza Strip, another UN school falls victim to an Israeli air strike

On Sunday, the war in the Gaza Strip lasted nine months. During this time, humanitarian workers stayed behind to assess the damage from a new Israeli air strike on a UN school.

“Another day. Another month. Another school hit,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, the largest aid agency in Gaza, said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, after a school in Nuseirat in central Gaza was “hit by Israeli forces” on Saturday. It was home to nearly 2,000 people forcibly displaced by the hostilities, the UNRWA commissioner-general said, adding that dozens of casualties had been reported.

The development came as talks on a ceasefire and the release of the hostages were reportedly set to resume in the next few days. Previous efforts to make progress have failed despite sustained international pressure from influential member states on both sides.

The success of this week’s talks will depend on meeting Hamas’s demand for a permanent end to fighting and the intense Israeli air strikes that have leveled large parts of the enclave, as well as the Israeli government’s stated war aim of destroying Hamas’ military strength after the group attacked several targets in southern Israel on October 7, killing around 1,250 people and taking more than 250 hostages.

All eyes are on the border between Lebanon and Israel

To date, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, according to health authorities in the Gaza Strip, and according to the latest data from the UNRWA relief agency, at least 520 people have been killed and at least 1,602 injured since the war began while seeking refuge in the UN agency’s emergency shelters.

In a regular update, the UN Office for International Development (OCHA) reported that up to 1.9 million people in Gaza had been displaced by the war, including some who had been left homeless “nine or ten times.” Previous estimates had been as high as 1.7 million, but that was before the Israeli operation in Rafah in early May, which led to further displacement from Rafah and other parts of the Gaza Strip.

The renewed push to end the war comes against a backdrop of daily exchanges of fire between Lebanese militants, Israel and Hamas’s main ally Hezbollah, across the UN-monitored Blue Line that separates them.

On Sunday, the Lebanon-based group claimed responsibility for a reported drone attack on Mount Hermon in Syria’s Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Hezbollah has said it will not cease operations until the war in Gaza ends.

“The gradual expansion of the scope and scale of confrontations well beyond the Blue Line significantly increases the risk of miscalculation and further deterioration of an already alarming situation,” the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) told UN News ahead of the latest escalation.

Citing the latest OCHA data, the UN force said that as of June 25, nearly 97,000 people had been displaced from southern Lebanon due to ongoing hostilities. More than 1,800 casualties were reported, including 435 deaths, including 97 civilians. “A political and diplomatic solution is the only viable long-term solution,” the force stressed.

Investigation ongoing

Responding to the school strike and Israeli military claims that it had been exploited by armed Palestinian groups, UNRWA chief Lazzarini said he took the allegations “very seriously.”

“This is precisely why I have repeatedly called for independent investigations to establish the facts and identify those responsible for attacks on UN premises or their misuse,” he said, referring to an ongoing UN office investigation into Israeli claims that 12 UNRWA staff were involved in the October 7 Hamas-led attacks.

Eight UNRWA staff members remain under investigation by the UN’s internal oversight body, OIOS; so far, three other cases have been suspended due to insufficient evidence from the Israeli authorities and one case has been closed because Israel did not provide supporting evidence, reports indicate.

“Nine months after this brutal war, I once again call for a ceasefire in which the people of Gaza and Israel will finally receive peace and protection and all hostages will be released immediately,” said Lazzarini.

“The longer this war continues, the deeper the divide will become and the more suffering people will have to endure.”