After nine months of war in Gaza, another UN school suffers Israeli airstrike

“Another day. Another month. Another school hit,” said Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, the largest aid agency in Gaza, in a post on X, formerly Twitter, after a school in Nuseirat, central Gaza, was “hit by the 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 comes as ceasefire and hostage-release talks were reportedly due to resume in coming days. Repeated previous efforts to make headway have foundered, despite sustained international pressure from Member States with influence on both sides.

Success in negotiations this week will depend on satisfying Hamas’s call for a permanent end to the fighting and intense Israeli airstrikes which have flattened vast areas of the enclave and the Israeli Government’s stated war aim of destroying Hamas’s military capability after the group attacked multiple targets in southern Israel on 7 October, killing around 1,250 people and capturing more than 250 hostages.

To date, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gazan health authorities and latest data from UNRWA indicates that at least 520 people sheltering in the UN agency's shelters have been killed and at least 1,602 injured since the start of the war.

In a regular situation update, the UN aid coordination office, OCHA, reported that up to 1.9 million people in Gaza have been uprooted by the war, including some displaced "nine or 10 times". Previous estimates were 1.7 million but this was before the Israeli operation in Rafah in early May, which led to additional displacements from Rafah and other parts across the Gaza Strip.  

The renewed push for an end to the war comes amid daily exchanges of fire between Lebanese militants Israel and Hezbollah, a key Hamas ally. On Sunday, the Lebanon-based group claimed responsibility for a reported drone strike on Mount Hermon in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights. Hezbollah has said that it will halt operations only when the war in Gaza ends.