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Shells hit U.N. school in Gaza; at least 15 dead (w/ video)

 
A Palestinian youth carries a child, wounded in an Israeli strike on a compound housing a U.N. school in Beit Hanoun, in the northern Gaza Strip, into the emergency room of the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya, Thursday. Israeli tank shells hit the compound, killing more than a dozen people and wounding dozens more who were seeking shelter from fierce clashes on the streets outside. Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra says the dead and injured in the school compound were among hundreds of people seeking shelter from heavy fighting in the area. [Associated Press]
A Palestinian youth carries a child, wounded in an Israeli strike on a compound housing a U.N. school in Beit Hanoun, in the northern Gaza Strip, into the emergency room of the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya, Thursday. Israeli tank shells hit the compound, killing more than a dozen people and wounding dozens more who were seeking shelter from fierce clashes on the streets outside. Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra says the dead and injured in the school compound were among hundreds of people seeking shelter from heavy fighting in the area. [Associated Press]
Published July 25, 2014

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — It was one of the worst scenes so far in a war that has put civilians in the crosshairs. An elementary school packed with hundreds of Palestinian evacuees seeking shelter under U.N. protection came under heavy fire Thursday, leaving 16 people dead and more than 100 wounded, including women, children and infants.

The question now is who did it.

A senior Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, said Thursday night that "there was a possibility" shells from Israeli forces struck the U.N.-run school in the Gaza Strip. But he also suggested that Hamas mortars or rockets could have been responsible. The Israeli army was investigating the incident "to see what exactly caused the deaths and injuries," he said.

The bombing of the shelter was followed by more mayhem at a massive demonstration Thursday night, when thousands of Palestinians protesting the Israeli incursion in Gaza clashed with Israeli security forces at the Qalandia border checkpoint between Israel and the West Bank. At least two Palestinians were killed and scores were injured, protest leaders said.

It was one of the largest protests in the West Bank in recent years, underscoring mounting Palestinian anger at Israel and the growing civilian casualties in the 2-week-old Gaza conflict. As the Muslim holy month of Ramadan comes to an end and the conflict rages on, Israeli security officials are concerned that the West Bank and mostly Arab East Jerusalem could become arenas of violent protest

"This is the West Bank waking up and saying, 'Gaza is not alone,' " Lina Ali, one of the protest's organizers, said in a phone interview. Ambulance sirens could be heard in the background. "We stand by Gaza."

As protesters tried to march from the West Bank city of Ramallah to Jerusalem, Israeli forces fired live rounds, rubber bullets and tear gas into the crowds, protest organizers said.

Early Friday, an Israeli military spokesman said as many as 10,000 protesters "were rioting violently." They hurled "burning tires, Molotov cocktails, rocks and even fireworks" at soldiers and border police. After riot-dispersal measures failed, the spokesman said the soldiers fired live rounds into the crowds, killing at least one protester. The spokesman said the military was looking into the report of a second death.

If the Israelis turn out to have fired the deadly blasts on the school in Gaza, international condemnation is likely to be heaped on the Jewish state, already under pressure from the Obama administration to end its 17-day offensive against Hamas, the militant Islamist movement that controls Gaza.

If it turns out Hamas is responsible for killing its own people with errant rocket or mortar fire, as Israel initially suggested Thursday, then the group — already branded a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the European Union — could find itself even more isolated.

Witnesses said the shelter in Beit Hanoun was filled with families who had fled their homes to escape more than two weeks of heavy shelling in the northern Gaza Strip.

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As fighting raged around them Thursday morning, a series of explosions first struck the courtyard and then the school, which is run by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, known as UNRWA.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon called the attack appalling and strongly condemned it.

The latest violence raised the Palestinian death toll since the Israeli offensive began to more than 777, according to Gaza health officials. On the Israeli side, 32 Israeli soldiers, two Israeli civilians and a Thai guest worker have been killed.

Survivors said they were told to gather at noon to await buses to take them to another UNRWA school that would be safer.

"We were waiting in the courtyard; the buses never came," said Sabah Kafarah, 17, who cradled her infant nephew in her arms. The boy's mother was in surgery.

All day Thursday, Beit Hanoun was a site of fierce fighting between Israeli troops and Hamas militants.

On the road from Gaza City to Beit Hanoun, large buildings were being consumed by raging fires as rockets from Hamas whistled overhead and Israeli tanks pounded targets.

The Israeli Defense Forces released a statement Thursday evening that helped explain why its forces might have hit the UNRWA shelter.

"From initial inquiries done about the incident, during the intense fighting in the area, militants opened fire at IDF soldiers from the school area," the statement read. "In order to eliminate the threat posed to their lives, they responded with fire toward the origins of the shooting."

Christopher Gunness, an UNRWA spokesman, said his agency "over the course of the day" had tried to coordinate with the Israeli army a window for civilians to leave, but "it was never granted."

"Hamas prevented civilians from evacuating the area during the window that the IDF gave them," the Israeli military countered.

More than 140,000 Palestinians — more than 7 percent of Gaza's total population — have fled their homes because of the fighting, and many of them have sought refuge in UNRWA buildings.

Thursday's attack marked fourth time that a U.N. facility has been hit since Israel began an operation in Gaza on July 8 in a bid to stop rocket attacks into Israel. Two UNRWA schools have been used by Gaza militants to hide weapons and rockets, unbeknownst to the agency, officials with the agency said.

Secretary of State John Kerry did not cast blame for the attack, which complicates his efforts to secure even a temporary truce.

"The tragic incident today, and every day, just underscores the work we are trying to do and what we are trying to achieve," Kerry told reporters in Cairo, where he was pursuing a cease-fire.

U.S., U.N., Egyptian and other diplomats are proposing a temporary cease-fire to begin as soon as this weekend and to last a week, the Washington Post reported, citing officials familiar with the effort said Thursday.