Ramallah/Prensa Latina
More than half of the schools housing displaced people in the Gaza Strip have been attacked by Israel in the past 10 months, a UN agency said Tuesday.
In its X account, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said that 21 such schools have been bombed since 4 July, resulting in at least 274 deaths.
The institution reiterated its call for a ceasefire in this coastal enclave to alleviate the situation of the more than two million Palestinians who live there.
On the same social network, Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s general commissioner, yesterday called for the protection of civilians in Gaza and condemned the attacks on schools, hospitals and homes.
“Civilians, women, children and detainees must be protected (…) schools, hospitals, homes, humanitarian personnel…”, wrote the official.
He recalled that 75 years ago the Geneva Conventions were promulgated to protect civilians in times of war.
These are universal rules designed to limit the devastating impact of conflicts on humanity, he stressed.
However, he stressed, over the past 10 months these rules have been flagrantly violated in Gaza by the Israeli army and Palestinian armed groups, including Hamas.
Even more worrying is the failure of States signatories to the Geneva Conventions to fulfil their responsibilities to respect these agreements and ensure that the parties to the conflict abide by them, he warned.
Lazzarini warned that “our shared values enshrined in the Conventions are at stake, as is our shared humanity.”
It is time to restore these values and renew the commitment to the Conventions, which are the compass of international humanitarian law, he said.
The commissioner recently reported that more than 200 UNRWA workers have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since the start of the war in October last year.
“They were teachers, doctors, nurses, social workers, engineers, support staff, logistics and communications technicians,” Lazzarini said.
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