By William Booth, Sudarsan Raghavan and Anne Gearan,
GAZA CITY — A U.N.-run school crowded with Palestinian evacuees in the northern part of the Gaza Strip came under shelling on Thursday, leaving at least 15 people dead and as many as 200 wounded, Palestinian officials said.
Several shells hit the main building and courtyard of the elementary school run by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Beit Hanoun, witnesses and Palestinian officials said. They said the school was filled with women and children who had fled their homes to escape more than two weeks of fighting between Israel and Hamas, the militant Palestinian Islamist group that runs the Gaza Strip.
Initial reports indicated that the shells came from Israeli tanks.
A senior Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, said that “there was a possibility” that shells from Israeli forces struck the U.N. school, adding that the Israeli army was investigating the incident to “see what exactly caused the deaths and injuries.”
Israeli forces, Lerner said, were involved in an intense battle near the school, punctuated by heavy gunfire and the firing of mortars at the militants’ positions.
Lerner said there were two options for the source of the shelling of the school: “errant firing as a result of our battles with Hamas” in the area of Beit Hanoun where the school was located — or rockets fired by Palestinian militants from Gaza aimed at Israel, but landed short in the neighborhood during the time frame of the attack, which was between 2 p.m. and 4.15 p.m. local time.
When asked if Israel suspected the U.N. school was being used a storage facility by Hamas for rockets and other weapons, Lerner replied: “The school was not a target in any way.” The United Nations reported in recent days that rockets belonging to the militants had been found in two other U.N. schools used as shelters for Palestinian refugees.
Israel’s military, Lerner said, had urged the United Nations and the International Committee for the Red Cross three days ago to evacuate the school because the militants were active there and “had no regard for civilian lives” or “international structures.” Israel’s military also informed the organizations that they would be launching operations there as well.
“But they didn’t comply,” said Lerner. “We do not target schools, and we do not target the U.N.”
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed shock over the school attack. “Many have been killed — including women and children, as well as U.N. staff,” he said in a statement. “Circumstances are still unclear. I strongly condemn this act.”
Christopher Gunness, an UNRWA spokesman, said via Twitter that the 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.” He said in another tweet: “Precise co-ordinates of the UNRWA shelter in Beit Hanoun had been formally given to the Israeli army.”
Israeli forces were battling Palestinian militants in Beit Hanoun on Thursday, said Capt. Eytan Buchman, an Israeli army spokesman. He said the militants fired rockets that landed in the city, suggesting that they may have been the ones who hit the U.N.-run facility.
In a series of subsequent statements, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Hamas had been firing rockets from “an area of Beit Hanoun where an UNRWA shelter is located.” Because the area is a battlefield, the IDF said, it told the Red Crescent humanitarian organization to evacuate civilians from the shelter between the hours of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Thursday.
“Hamas prevented civilians from evacuating the area during the window that the IDF gave them,” the military said. Instead, it said, Hamas continued firing from Beit Hanoun, and “the IDF responded by targeting the source of the fire.”
The Israeli military added that “several rockets launched from Gaza toward Israel fell short and hit Beit Hanoun.”
A spokesman for UNRWA in Gaza, Adnan Abu Hasnah, said it was Israel that refused to let the displaced persons and U.N. staff safely move from the school.
“The Israelis refused to grant us permission to go,” Hasnah said.
More than 140,000 Palestinians have fled their homes because of the fighting, and many of them have sought refuge in buildings run by UNWRA.
The latest violence raised the Palestinian death toll in Israel’s Gaza offensive to more than 750, according to Gaza health officials. On the Israeli side, 32 soldiers, two Israeli civilians and a Thai guest worker have been reported killed.
Reporters who arrived at the school in Beit Hanoun soon after the attack found it empty, with pools of blood smeared in the hallways and courtyard. The scene showed evidence of flight and panic. There were sheep running through the corridors, spilled food, abandoned shoes and piles of bloodied bandages.
Hundreds of people were taking shelter in the school under U.N. protection when it was struck.
At the nearby Beit Hanoun Hospital, less than five minutes from the U.N. shelter, terrified children were clinging to their mothers as ambulance drivers surged to the door of the emergency room.
The hospital director, Ayman Hamdan, said four patients among the first wave of arrivals died on his operating tables. He described massive injuries from shrapnel. Wounded people were missing limbs he said.
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.
Kafarah and others said they heard at least three explosions.
“The wounded are women and children, even infants,” said Hamdan, the hospital director and surgeon. He said his facility was overwhelmed by injured patients, who were being routed to the larger Kamal Adwain Hospital in Beit Lahiya.
A few minutes later after he spoke, a shell exploded 50 yards from the front gate of his hospital, sending a large cloud of dust into the air as journalists, paramedics, patients and their families ducked for cover.
It was the fourth time that a U.N. facility has been hit since Israel began an operation against Gaza on July 8 aimed at stopping rocket attacks on Israeli soil from the coastal enclave.
Secretary of State John F. Kerry met late Thursday in Cairo with the U.N. secretary general, who told reporters that he was “shocked and appalled” by what has happened in Beit Hanoun.”
Neither Ban nor Kerry addressed who might be responsible for the shelling of the school, which complicates his efforts to secure even a temporary truce and may increase pressure on the Obama administration to lean harder on Israel.
“The tragic incident today, and every day, just underscores the work we are trying to do and what we are trying to achieve,” Kerry said.
Kerry spent the day Thursday making phone calls in pursuit of a cease-fire from a temporary office in a Cairo hotel. He planned to stay in Egypt at least until Friday in hopes of a breakthrough.
“Right now gaps remain between the parties, so his focus is on finding a formula that both sides can accept,” a senior State Department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the sensitive diplomatic effort.
Kerry spoke to Netanyahu and diplomats from Egypt, Qatar, Jordan, Germany, Norway and elsewhere on Thursday, working both on installing a short-term cease-fire and the outlines of a larger deal that European, Arab and other diplomats said could follow.
Speaking to reporters, Kerry brushed off a question about how long it might take to bring about a cease-fire.
“We still have more work to do,” Kerry said.
The school was struck amid continuing Israeli airstrikes and as Israeli tanks plowed through Palestinian neighborhoods in Gaza on Thursday.
Hamas militants stood by their demand that Israel and Egypt lift the economic blockade of the seaside strip that borders both nations before they would lay down their arms. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed resolve that the fighting would go on until Israel accomplishes more of its military goal to destroy Hamas rocket caches and border tunnels used to infiltrate Israel.
Palestinian militants have launched more than 2,000 rockets toward Israel during the fighting.
Raghavan and Gearan reported from Jerusalem. William Branigin in Washington and Ruth Eglash in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
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