War in the Gaza Strip
Israel attacks school building – six UN staff killed

People walk through the rubble of the school building in Gaza that Israel attacked
© Majdi Fathi / Imago Images
In the fight against Hamas, Israel has attacked a civilian facility. The victims so far have been mainly civilians. The UN Secretary General is appalled.
According to a military spokesman, Israel’s air force has seized a command and control post of the Islamist Hamas attacked the site of a former school in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip. A number of measures had been taken beforehand to reduce the danger to civilians, it was said. According to hospital staff in the Nuseirat refugee camp, around 14 people were killed in the attack. The information cannot be independently verified.
The building and its surroundings were a facility of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA). According to UNRWA, six of the agency’s employees were killed. The site provided shelter for around 12,000 people, mainly women and children.
UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said in New York that UN properties should never be attacked or used by military groups. When asked whether he could rule out the possibility of Hamas representatives being there, he said he could not answer the question. Israel accuses Hamas of hiding in such facilities and among civilians.
UN school in Nuseirat has already been hit several times
UN Secretary-General António Guterres was once again shocked. “What is happening in Gaza is absolutely unacceptable,” he wrote about the attack on X. “These dramatic violations of international humanitarian law must stop now.”
UNRWA said that never before had so many aid workers been killed in a single attack. “This school has been hit five times since the war began,” UNRWA said on X.
The Israeli army spoke of a “targeted” attack on “terrorists” who were in a Hamas command center on the school grounds. The army initially gave no information about the targets or the outcome of the attack.
Israel attacked again from Lebanon
Meanwhile, EU chief diplomat Josep Borrell is continuing his Middle East trip in Lebanon. In the capital Beirut, he plans to meet Prime Minister Najib Mikati, among others. In addition to the situation in Lebanon, the discussion will also likely focus on the conflict between the Shiite militia Hezbollah and Israel.
Since the beginning of the Gaza war, there have been almost daily military confrontations between the Israeli army and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Tens of thousands have fled the border region because of the fighting. Militant statements by Israeli politicians have recently fueled concerns about an escalation of the conflict. On Wednesday, according to the Israeli army, more than 100 missiles were fired from Lebanon into Israel. The military, for its part, fired at targets in southern Lebanon.
Israel wants Hezbollah to withdraw behind the Litani River, 30 kilometers from the border – as stipulated in a UN resolution. However, the Shiite militia will not stop shelling Israel until there is a ceasefire in the Gaza war between Israel and its ally Hamas.
However, the indirect negotiations on a ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages held by the Islamist Hamas – in which Egypt, the USA and the Gulf state of Qatar are the main mediators – are at a standstill. On Wednesday, Hamas representatives met with representatives of Qatar and Egypt in Doha for further talks.
Defense Minister: Hamas leader “new Osama bin Laden”
Israel’s Defense Minister Joav Galant now calls the leader of Hamas, Jihia al-Sinwar, the “new Osama bin Laden.” In a video released in the United States on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, he said: “He is the Osama bin Laden of Gaza. We will find him and bring him to justice – dead or in prison.”
Galant’s message on Platform X came a day after an interview with the financial service Bloomberg with Brigadier General Gal Hirsch, who is in charge of hostages and missing persons, in which he spoke of an offer of safe passage for al-Sinwar from the Gaza Strip. “I am prepared to provide a safe corridor for Sinwar, his family and anyone who wants to join him,” he said.
A Hamas representative told the German Press Agency that his organization had received an offer to allow Sinwar and his family to leave the country in order to reach a Gaza agreement. However, Hamas would only be prepared to respond to the offer if it were part of a comprehensive agreement.
Also on Wednesday evening, several hundred people demonstrated in Israel for a ceasefire and an agreement on the release of the remaining 101 hostages, including relatives of those who were abducted by Hamas to the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023.