Al-Sardi school attack

Al-Sardi school attack
Part of the Israel-Hamas war
Al-Sardi school
Location	Nuseirat refugee camp, Gaza Strip, Palestine
Date	6 June 2024
Target	UNRWA school
Attack type	Airstrike, massacre
Deaths	At least 33 Palestinians (including 9 children and 3 women)
Injured	70+ Palestinians
Perpetrators	Israel Defense Forces

On 6 June 2024, the Israel Defense Forces struck a UNRWA school in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing at least 33 people including 3 women, 9 children and 21 men, nine of whom Israel later claimed to be Hamas militants. American munitions were used in the attack.

Background

UNRWA ran about 300 schools in the Gaza Strip until all educational programmes were suspended following the 7 October attack and the Israeli response. Many of these schools have been transformed into refugee centres for Gazans fleeing their homes and the fighting. Some 6,000 refugees had sought shelter at al-Sardi school. On 6 May 2024, Israel began the Rafah offensive during the Israel-Hamas war. Israel had previously been criticized during the offensive for the offensive itself and airstrikes conducted by Israel on Palestinian civilians, such as the Tel Al-Sultan massacre, in which 45–50 Palestinian civilians were killed in an area designated a "safe zone" for civilians in the Gaza Strip.

Incident

On 6 June 2024, at approximately 2 a.m., Israeli forces targeted the classrooms on the highest floor of the Al-Sardi school in the Nuseirat refugee camp with two missiles in an airstrike. The strike was carried after the army declared new ground assaults and airstrikes on several refugee camps in central Gaza. UNRWA said 6,000 Palestinian refugees were sheltering in the school at the time of the attack. Since the start of the war, more than 180 UN agency buildings have been hit and more than 450 displaced people have been killed in those facilities. The munition used in the attack was of the same variety employed in the Tel al-Sultan massacre, namely a GBU-39.

Casualties

The dead and wounded were immediately transferred to Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital in the nearby city of Deir al-Balah, which was according to the New York Times overwhelmed by chaos as it struggled to cope with the casualties. According to eyewitnesses, women and girls slept in a separate quarters from the rooms targeted which were used to shelter men and boys. The initial estimate by the Gaza Health Ministry and Authorities at al-Aqsa Hospital was that this attack left at least 40 dead, including 14 children and 9 women, and more than 74 wounded. The Hospital Morgue later amended the casualties after a count to three women, nine children and 21 men. Associated Press journalist was allowed to confirm the count of bodies but not look beneath the shrouds.

Al-Thawabta said the number of dead and wounded entering Al-Aqsa Hospital is three times the clinical capacity of the hospital.

Rescuers have said they only recovered the bodies of civilians from the site. In contrast, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the spokesman for the IDF stated it was a "precise strike" based on intelligence and that the militants were planning and conducting attacks from inside three classrooms which were specifically targeted after it was confirmed that no women or children were inside. The IDF has released the names of seventeen alleged militants it said it killed. No further evdience was given to substantiate the claim. Eight (8) of the names provided by Israel do not actually match hospital records, and one of the 'identified fighters' was actually an 8-year-old boy.

Peter Lerner, The Israel Defense Forces Spokesman, said that it was not aware of any civilian casualties in this attack. Ismail Al-Thawabta, Director General of the Government Media Office, denied Israel's claim, telling Reuters that the occupiers use "false fabricated stories to justify the brutal crime it conducted against dozens of displaced people."

American-made munitions

A CNN analysis of video from the scene and a review by an explosive weapons expert found that US-made munitions were used in the strike on the school. CNN identified fragments of at least two US-made GBU-39 small-diameter bombs (SDB) in a video filmed at the scene by a journalist working for CNN. previously, CNN verified the use of US-made weapons in the Israeli army's deadly attack on the Tel al-Sultan massacre. According to The Washington Post, Weapons experts identified the Weapons used in the attack as the US-made GBU-39. Fragments visible in confirmed images from the scene define a cage code, or five-character sequence, used to identify dealers who sell weapons to the US government. The code "81873" connected this fragment to Woodward HRT, a weapons fragments manufacturer registered in Valencia, California.

Earlier, the US State Department report said it was "reasonable to assess" that Israel violated international law while using US weapons in its military operations in Gaza, but noted that the US did "not have complete information to verify" whether the US-made weapons have been "were specifically used" in alleged violations of international humanitarian law.

Reactions

UN chief Antonio Guterres condemned the massacre, saying that "UN premises are inviolable". The US called for Israel to show full "transparency" about the incident.

United States Department of State said the Israeli attack did not cross US President, Joe Biden's so-called "red line", or a large-scale operation in Rafah.

Ismail Al-Thawabta told reporters, "This terrible massacre that was carried out by the Israeli occupiers, a clear evidence of genocide is the ethnic cleansing against civilians, including women and children, and refugees in the Gaza Strip.

See also

• Attacks on schools during the Israeli invasion of Gaza
• Israeli war crimes