Gaza crisis: US condemns fatal attack on UN school, says culprit unknown – as it happened

We’re going to wrap up our live blog coverage for the day. Here’s a summary of where things stand:

• Two sets of strikes in Gaza Wednesday – one at a UN shelter, one at an outdoor market – left scenes of dead and dying civilians, pavement pooled with blood and overcrowded hospital corridors. In all, 129 were killed and more than 400 injured in Gaza Wednesday, according to health officials.
• Strikes on a UN shelter in Jabalia killed 16, wounded 100 and elicited international outrage. The United States condemned the attack and called for an investigation.
• UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon said “nothing is more shameful than attacking sleeping children” and said “all available evidence points to Israeli artillery as the cause.”
• 3,300 people had taken refuge at the school after heeding warnings to flee their homes, the UN said. It was the sixth time a UN school had been struck, it said.
• The Israeli army said it was returning fire from the area.
• A separate set of strikes on a market in Shuja’iya killed 15 and wounded 200, medics said. A harrowing 6-minute video of the attack showed successive strikes and young men dying on the ground.
• Palestinian health ministry figures released minutes ago put the number dead in Gaza at 1,361, including 315 children, and 6,780 wounded.
  
• Almost 220,000 displaced Gazans have sought refuge at UN shelters, according to UNRWA, which warns that it is “overwhelmed” and “at the breaking point.”
• The Israeli military said three soldiers were killed in a booby trap in a building, said to be an abandoned UNRWA clinic housing a tunnel, in Khan Younis; 56 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the conflict.
• The Israeli security cabinet met Wednesday night and agreed the military operation in Gaza would continue.
• Representatives of Palestinian factions including Hamas joined ceasefire talks in Cairo as Egyptian officials redoubled efforts to broker a deal. Read more here.

Despite power shortages and myriad other hardships, some Gazans remain active on social media, reporting strikes and sharing scenes of life under siege.

An extensive list of Gaza tweeps (including Arabic) is here.

The UN now puts the number of internally displaced persons in Gaza at almost 220,000.

The Gaza health ministry says at least 129 people were killed Wednesday in Gaza and 1,340 have been killed overall, with more than 7,000 wounded.

Bolivia has reportedly declared Israel a terrorist state. President Evo Morales announced the move during a talk with a group of educators in the city of Cochabamba, AFP reported.

The three Israeli soldiers reported killed earlier today died in an explosion at a booby-trapped building that housed the opening of a tunnel, the IDF’s Gaza division commander, Brig. Gen. Micky Edelstein, was quoted by the Times of Israel as saying.

The Israeli military described the building as an abandoned “UNRWA health clinic.”

The Times reports:

The clinic had apparently been abandoned by its UN personnel. UNRWA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The three soldiers, members of the elite Maglan unit, were taking precautionary measures in efforts to limit damage to the structure before eliminating the tunnel, when the explosives detonated in the small building.

The soldiers had sent in sniffing dogs and a small robot to minimize damage to the structure, located in Khan Yunis, but explosives rigged to the building detonated, toppling part of the building on top of the soldiers.

Read the full piece here.

A graphic video of the strikes on Shuja’iya market today that killed at least 17 and wounded 200, according to health ministry figures, has been uploaded to YouTube (warning: graphic).

The video, labeled as Manara footage, last six minutes 18 seconds. It begins sometime after the strikes, which continue for two minutes on the video, began.

The video begins with the arrival of two ambulances on a scene where strikes have already happened. Soon a set of strikes leaves the scene obscured in dust. When the view and sound return, there is blood and screaming all around. The camera moves from body to body, some wounded, some apparently dead, as the strikes continue, sending up smoke and flames. There is a lot of blood. The footage passes over the body identified elsewhere as that of Palestinian photographer Rami Rayan, killed in the attack.

Earlier reporting on circumstances of the attack is here.

(h/t @acarvin)

Video: Gaza: nothing more shameful than attacking sleeping children, says UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon

Here’s a roundup of stories on the Gaza conflict published in the Guardian this afternoon:

UN: ‘world stands disgraced’ as shelter for Gaza children is shelled by Israel, by Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem and Hazem Balousha in Jabaliya:

United Nations officials described the killing of sleeping children as a disgrace to the world and accused Israel of a serious violation of international law after a school in Gaza being used to shelter Palestinian families was shelled on Wednesday.

At least 15 people, mostly children and women, died when the school in Jabaliya refugee camp was hit by five shells during a night of relentless bombardment across Gaza. More than 100 people were injured.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, said the attack was “outrageous and unjustifiable” and demanded “accountability and justice”. The UN said its officials had repeatedly given details of the school and its refugee population to Israel.

Gaza UN school shelling: ‘They came here for protection, not to be killed’, by Hazem Balousha in Jabaliya

Three thousand people have squashed into Jabaliya Elementary A&B Girls’ School since the Israeli military warned people to leave their homes and neighbourhoods or risk death under intense bombardment. Classroom Number 1, just inside the school’s entrance, had become home to about 40, mostly women and children.

As a shell blasted through the wall, showering occupants with shrapnel, Amna Zantit, 31, scrambled to gather up her three terrified infants in a panicked bid for the relative safety of the school yard. “Everyone was trying to escape,” she said, clutching her eight-month old baby tight.

Egypt’s decision to side with Israel has cost Gaza dear, by Patrick Kingsley

During this latest Gazan war, the conflict has been predominantly portrayed as one between Israel and Hamas. But a third party has exacerbated the tensions in Israel’s favour: Egypt. A traditional broker of Israeli-Palestinian relations, Egypt is usually assumed to act with Gaza’s best interests at heart – and has done its best to maintain that perception in recent weeks. It has condemned Gazan deaths, called for a ceasefire, and allowed a few critically injured Gazans to be treated in Egyptian hospitals. Since Said’s blocked convoy, Egyptian officials have also finally allowed other medics and medical supplies to cross the border.

But other Egyptian actions – both over the past year, and in recent days – have led to accusations that Egypt is indifferent to Gazan suffering – and that its interests are aligned with Israel’s.

Read Patrick’s full piece here.

Israel’s security cabinet decided to continue military operations in Gaza on Wednesday night, ignoring international pressure for an immediate ceasefire after Hamas rejected a barely-observed pause in the three-week conflict. Here is our latest news story:

Against a background of heavy fighting in Gaza, the Israeli prime minister, Benyamin Netanyahu convened his senior colleagues to discuss the crisis amid warnings that Hamas’s demands for lifting the siege of the Palestinian coastal enclave were a “non-starter”.

Israel was “not close” to a ceasefire, the Ha’aretz newspaper quoted an unnamed senior official as saying after the five-hour cabinet meeting. “When a ceasefire proposal that answers Israel’s important needs is laid on the table, it will be considered. The operation continues and the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] will expand its attacks against Hamas and the other terror organisations.” Temporary humanitarian ceasefires would continue, he said.

Read the full piece here. Further:

General Sami Turjeman, the head of Israel’s southern command, told Israel Radio that his forces would complete the destruction of cross-border tunnels in Gaza within a few days. “We have killed scores of Hamas’s best fighters,” he said. “With every day that passes we are getting closer to our goal of destroying the tunnels.” Israel’s media and public is focusing narrowly on military operations, casualties and achievements.

The US has agreed to supply Israel with various types of ammunition in a “non-emergency” sale, CNN cites an unnamed US defense official as saying:

Among the items being bought are 120mm mortar rounds and 40mm ammunition for grenade launchers, officials said. Those will come from a stockpile the United States keeps in Israel, which is worth more than $1 billion.

Read the full piece here.

As our live blog coverage continues, here’s a summary of where things stand:

• The White House condemned the shelling Wednesday of a UN school in Gaza in which 16 were killed and at least 100 wounded.
  
• US reluctance to lay blame for the attack was not shared by UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, who called the strikes “outrageous” and “unjustifiable” and said “all available evidence points to Israeli artillery as the cause.”
• 3,300 people had taken refuge at the school after heeding warnings to flee their homes, the UN said. It was the sixth time a UN school had been struck, it said.
• Palestinian officials blamed Israel for an afternoon strike on a busy market in Shuja’iya that killed 17 and wounded at least 200. The market was crowded because people thought there was a ceasefire, the health ministry said.
• Other strikes across Gaza, including in Khan Younis in the south, contributed to a death toll of 129 in Gaza on Wednesday, the health ministry said.
• The Israeli military announced that three soldiers had been killedin southern Gaza, bringing the total number of soldiers killed in the current conflict to 56.
• Representatives of Palestinian factions including Hamas joined ceasefire talks in Cairo as Egyptian officials redoubled efforts to broker a deal.

Heartbreak: Reporting on Gaza’s child victims

AFP Middle East correspondent Sara Hussein recently completed an assignment in Gaza, where more than 1,280 Palestinians have been killed -- including more than 240 children.

Hussein has written a personal account that begins with this paragraph:

GAZA, July 30, 2014 --- This war in Gaza is not the first war I have covered, it isn’t even the first war I’ve covered in Gaza. I’ve been to places like Syria and Libya, and seen some of the horrible things that are normal in armed conflict, and I’ve seen dead children before, but never like during this war in Gaza. Never so many, never so often.

Read the full piece here. (h/t @mondoweiss)

The UN secretary general has contradicted the US assertion that a further investigation is needed to determine who is responsible for the Wednesday attack on the UN school in Jabaliya.

UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said “all available evidence points to Israeli artillery as the cause” of the pre-dawn attack, and he pointedly noted that Israeli military authorities had received the coordinates of the school from the United Nations 17 times, including on Tuesday night. The Associated Press reports:

Ban condemned the attack as “outrageous” and “unjustifiable,” and demanded an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas.

“Nothing is more shameful than attacking sleeping children,” Ban said on his arrival in San Jose, Costa Rica. “I condemn this attack in the strongest possible terms.”

Ban said “all available evidence points to Israeli artillery as the cause” of the pre-dawn attack, and he pointedly noted that Israeli military authorities had received the coordinates of the school from the United Nations 17 times, including on Tuesday night.

At U.N. headquarters in New York, Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson expressed “shock and dismay” at the attack that also injured more than 100. He stressed that more than 3,000 civilians had sought shelter at the elementary girls’ school in the Jebaliya refugee camp.

Israeli’s military said it fired back after soldiers were targeted by mortar rounds launched from the vicinity of the school.

Another question for Harf about the attack on the UN school in Jabaliya: “Do you have reason to doubt the UNRWA version of events?”

Harf: “We’re still gathering the facts here.”

The UN version of events includes this sentence: “Our initial assessment is that it was Israeli artillery that hit our school, in which 3,300 people had sought refuge.”

Harf is asked about the so-called transcript of the Obama-Netanyahu call published Tuesday by the Times of Israel (see our coverage here), which both sides condemned as fake, false and misleading.

“One of the craziest things I’ve ever seen, to be frank,” Harf says.

“Many members of Congress I think like to use Israel as a political issue to divide the country.” – US state department spox Marie Harf

“The partisan noise you sometimes hear back in Washington,” she continues – “I think the secretary is able to tune that out.”

“We don’t know for certain who shelled this school,” Harf, the state department spokeswoman says. “We need to get all the facts.”