Palestinian women grieve over the death of relatives outside the morgue of the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya, on July 24, 2014, after a UN school in the northern Beit Hanun district of the Gaza Strip was hit by an Israeli shell.
AFP/Gaza
Fifteen people were killed, including a baby, Thursday when an Israeli shell slammed into a UN-run school in Gaza sheltering Palestinians fleeing fighting between Hamas and the army, medics said.
Emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said at least 200 people were wounded, with further casualties expected to be brought into nearby hospitals.
But Israeli army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner cast doubt on whether the military was to blame, suggesting militants firing missiles near the school could have caused the deaths.
It was the latest in a number of alleged Israeli strikes on schools and hospitals in the embattled Palestinian territory, as the death toll from a 17-day operation to halt rocket fire by Gaza militants topped 770.
A spokesman for the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA confirmed "multiple dead" at the school in Beit Hanun, in the northern Gaza Strip, where hundreds of Palestinians had sought refuge.
But he could not immediately give an exact toll.
"Precise coordinates of the UNRWA shelter in Beit Hanun had been formally given to the Israeli army," Chris Gunness said on his Twitter account.
An AFP correspondent saw nine bodies, including those of a one-year-old child and his mother, at a mortuary in nearby Beit Lahiya.
The shell appeared to have struck in the middle of the school courtyard, which was covered with blood stains, the correspondent said.
All around the sides of the yard, blankets and clothes had been hung up by people who had turned it into a makeshift home after fleeing their own houses.
A second UN official told AFP that at around 2:50 pm (1150 GMT) a shell had struck "in or near" the school, adding that UNRWA had tried to ask people to leave shortly beforehand, fearing it might be a target.
Gunness said there had earlier been "firing around the compound," and asked the army for time to evacuate civilians.
"We've spent much of the day trying to negotiate or to coordinate a window so that civilians, including our staff, could leave.
"That was never granted... and the consequences of that appear to be tragic," Gunness told AFP.
But Lerner disputed that account, describing Gunness's assertion as "ridiculous."
"He is wrong," he said, adding that a humanitarian window had been granted between 10:00 and 2:00pm on Thursday.
"The humanitarian window was implemented today and we've been asking them for the last three days to evacuate people because we understand that Hamas will go to all lengths to put people in harm's way," Lerner told AFP.
He acknowledged that "we don't know what caused this tragedy," but suggested militant fire could have been to blame.
"There are several incidents today picked up by our sensors where Hamas fired mortars and rockets that landed back in Beit Hanun," he said.
'My father is dead'
At a nearby hospital to which the wounded had been evacuated, a young girl screamed "My father's dead!"
A Palestinian man said that after initial Israeli fire in the area, those sheltering in the school were waiting to be evacuated when the shell hit.
On Tuesday, an UNRWA school sheltering the displaced came under Israeli fire as a team was inspecting damage from the previous day.
A UN official told AFP that four schools have been hit in Israel's latest operation to stamp out rocket fire from Gaza -- the bloodiest since 2009.
Israel's military has also hit hospitals in Gaza, blaming resulting civilian deaths on Hamas, charging that the Islamist movement was using innocents as "human shields".
It accuses militant groups including Hamas of storing weapons in hospitals, schools and other civilian facilities.
UNRWA said this week it discovered rocket caches in two of its vacant schools, strongly condemning the incidents as a violation of its premises.
Thirty-two Israeli soldiers have been killed in the army's ground operation, and three civilians have died in Israel from rocket fire.
