Israel to probe shelling of UN school in Gaza

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have ordered an investigation into the shelling last summer of a UN school in Gaza that killed at least 20 Palestinians.

The IDF on Thursday ordered the military police to open criminal investigations into six potentially unlawful acts, including the shelling of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Elementary Girls School in Jabalia, about four km north of Gaza City, on July 30, 2014, Xinhua news agency reported.

The school was used as a shelter for displaced Palestinians during the 50-day Gaza war between Israel and Hamas-led militants last summer. Twenty-one people were killed and more than 100 others injured during the shelling.

The IDF said five tank shells hit the school in response to mortar fire by Hamas from the vicinity of the school. However, a New York Times reporter who visited the scene said no one saw Palestinian fighters in the area and no bullet holes or empty castings supported IDF claims.

The UNRWA claims that it had repeatedly notified the IDF about the shelter's location in order to avoid being attacked.

Some human rights groups also alleged that Israel "provided no evidence to suggest militants were operating in the area", nor "explain why it used a weapon as indiscriminate as a high-explosive heavy-artillery shell so near a UN school housing displaced people".

After its offensive, codenamed Operation Protective Edge, on Gaza last summer, the IDF decided to handle claims, delivered by human rights organisations and the UN, over unlawful military activities.

Senior IDF officials believed that the attack on the UNRWA school was not in accordance with IDF rules of conduct and, therefore, ordered a criminal investigation into it.

More than 2,200 Palestinians were killed, including scores of children, during the two-month war, while some 18,000 homes were destroyed or badly damaged and more than 100,000 Palestinians displaced.

On the Israeli side, more than 70 Israelis died in the war, mostly soldiers operating in Gaza, as well as a number of citizens who were killed in Hamas rocket-attacks.