Israeli shells fall on UN school during evacuation
The wounded from the bombed UNRWA school in the Gaza Strip describe a scene of chaos and horror as hundreds gathered to board buses.
BEIT LAHIYA, Gaza Strip — About 800 people were at the Beit Hanoun preparatory school for refugees, operated by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the northern Gaza Strip, when Israeli tanks shelled it on July 24.
Sixteen Palestinians were killed and hundreds were wounded, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. They had been displaced from their homes in Beit Hanoun.
This was not the first time that Israeli artillery has struck a school housing refugees who fled unsafe areas in the Gaza Strip. In the 2008-2009 war, on Jan. 6, 2009, a mortar round landed near the UNRWA-affiliated Fakhurah school in the Jabaliya refugee camp, killing 43 refugees, including 14 children.
On the afternoon of July 24, Al-Monitor went to the nearby town of Beit Hanoun, which had become a ghost town with only a few donkeys on the main street. Factories and installations were devoured by flames, with nobody trying to put them out.
