Children were among the 20 killed in Israel’s bombing of the UN school in Gaza [Getty]
Israeli forces targeted another UN school in Gaza on Sunday evening, killing at least 20 Palestinians, including children, while almost 19,000 children were hospitalised over the past four months for acute malnutrition.
Palestinians woke up to devastating scenes of their possessions and the bodies of loved ones strewn across the ground, as people scrambled to search for survivors.
According to the Wafa news agency, citing local sources, the attack on the Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz school in Khan Younis wounded many forcibly displaced families who were sheltering at the location.
Israeli forces also bombed multiple residential buildings in the Abu Qamar area of Jabalia refugee camp, which comes after a similar assault on a school in Beit Hanoun on Sunday which killed at least 43 people.
Israel has continued to ramp up attacks on north Gaza, which has been under a full siege for over two months, despite international calls to end the aggression and allow aid into the area.
Iran’s foreign ministry issued a strongly worded statement following the attacks, calling the Israeli strikes on homes and refugee camps “barbaric”.
Calling for a stop to the war on the Strip and for Israeli leaders to be held accountable, Esmail Baghaei said that a lack of action from the UN Security Council and the international community was allowing “persisting genocide” and that the US backing of Israel is “shameless”.
Israel also garnered widespread condemnation after killing an Al Jazeera cameraman on Sunday, marking the fifth journalist to be killed from the channel since the start of the war on the enclave.
The chief executive of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Jodie Ginsberg, called Israel’s killing of journalists a “systematic attempt” to censor information coming out of Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
“We are reliant on [Palestinian journalists] for all the information we’re getting out about what’s happening inside Gaza” she noted, labelling Israel’s killings a “war crime”.
The Al Jazeera Network denounced the killing of their journalist, calling it “targeted”.
“Al Jazeera Media Network condemns in the strongest terms the killing of its cameraman, Ahmad Baker Al-Louh, 39, by the Israeli occupation forces. He was brutally killed in an air strike that targeted a Civil Defence post in the market area of Al-Nuseirat Camp, central Gaza Strip” the statement said.
Acute malnutrition soaring
Meanwhile, the UN agency UNRWA announced this week that almost 19,000 children in Gaza have been hospitalised in the last four months for acute malnutrition.
The organisation said the figure is nearly double the cases recorded in the first half of the year in the Strip and highlighted that the spike in cases comes as Israel continues to obstruct the entry of essential humanitarian aid.
One of the items in short supply is baby formula, with the remaining functioning health centres left in the Strip having little to no supply of formula to distribute.
The UN on Monday reiterated that Gaza was facing an “unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe”, adding that nearly 1.9 million people have been displaced multiple times and over 70 percent of Gaza’s infrastructure has been destroyed.
“Women and girls are facing severe challenges, including 50,000 pregnant women who have been left without the essentials to survive” a statement from the organisation read.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health said on Sunday that Israeli forces have also destroyed the Abu Shbak Health Centre in Jabalia, which provided essential first aid and mental health services to Palestinians.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed 44,976 Palestinians and wounded 106,759 others since 7 October 2023.
