Israel okays new Gaza truce after school attacked
Heavy smoke and fire billow from a section of Gaza City following an Israeli military strike on July 29, 2014. The Israeli offensive, which began on July 8 to end Hamas' rocket attacks on the Jewish state, has killed more than 1,100 Palestinians while 56 Israelis have died, all but three of them soldiers. AFP PHOTO | ASHRAF AMRA
What you need to know:
- Violence in Gaza claimed at least 76 lives on Wednesday, with the worst strike at the school in the Jabaliya refugee camp.
- UN figures show up to 240,000 people have fled their homes in a territory which is home to 1.7 million Palestinians, leaving one in seven homeless.
GAZA CITY
Israel was Wednesday observing a four-hour lull in Gaza several hours after a deadly strike on a school killed 16, drawing a furious response from a UN refugee agency.
The humanitarian window went into effect at 1200 GMT, although the Israeli army said it would not apply to areas where troops were “currently operating” in a move Hamas dismissed as a publicity stunt with “no value”.
The announcement came several hours after troops made a “significant advance” into the narrow coastal strip as the security cabinet met in Tel Aviv to discuss an Egyptian proposal for a longer ceasefire, army radio reported.
The temporary truce deal came into force just hours after two Israel shells slammed into a UN school in the northern Gaza Strip where more than 3,000 people had sought shelter, killing at least 16 of them. It was the second time in a week that a UN school had been hit, hiking the death toll in Gaza from 23 days of bloodshed to 1,306 and drawing a furious denunciation from the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.
“I condemn in the strongest possible terms this serious violation of international law by Israeli forces,” said UNRWA Commissioner General Pierre Krahenbuhl, saying the school’s location had been communicated to the Israeli army 17 times.
“No words to adequately express my anger and indignation,” he wrote on his official Twitter account, saying that 3,300 people had been sheltering there at the time.
“I call on the international community to take deliberate international political action to put an immediate end to the continuing carnage,” he said.
Violence in Gaza claimed at least 76 lives on Wednesday, with the worst strike at the school in the Jabaliya refugee camp. UN figures show up to 240,000 people have fled their homes in a territory which is home to 1.7 million Palestinians, leaving one in seven homeless. Most have sought refuge in more than 80 UN schools, although the agency has twice reported finding rockets stashed in two of its uninhabited schools.
