Gaza school attacked as children queue for sweets
Isreal military assault on Gaza drew fierce international criticism once more on Sunday after 10 people, including children, were killed and at least 30 hurt in a missile attack at a UN school sheltering refugees forced from their homes by nearly a month of war.
It was the second such incident in less than a week and prompted another broadside from Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, who called it "a moral outrage and a criminal act" and appeared to blame Israel.
"The attack is yet another gross violation of international humanitarian law, " said Mr Ban, who had strongly condemned an attack last week on another assault on a UN school in Jabaliya, that left 16 dead.
In addition, late on Sunday Israel announced it will hold its fire in most of the Gaza Strip for a seven-hour “humanitarian window” on Monday.
According to an army statement, the ceasefire will take place between 10am and 5pm local time in all of the Palestinian enclave besides the area east of southern city Rafah, “where clashes were still ongoing and there was Israeli military presence.”
Head of the Israeli military activities in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, General Yoav Mordechai, warned in the statement that “if the truce will be violated, the army will respond with fire toward the source of the (Palestinian) fire during the declared hudna,” or truce.
Mordechai also called on residents of Abasan al Kabira and Abasan al Saghira, two villages east of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, to return to their homes from dawn.
For those in Rafah, where forces remained visibly on the ground, there is no respite at all. Nine members of the al-Ghoul family died when a missile wrecked their home in a narrow street at 7am yesterday. The dead were named as Ismael al-Ghoul and his wife, Khadera, along with two of their children and five grandchildren.
"The parents had a whole family and none of them were militants," said Yousef al-Ghoul, 22, a neighbour and relative.
Even those areas that Israeli officials had declared safe for residents to return home appeared to gain no dividend from the military pull back.
In the north-eastern town of Beit Lahiya, a family of 10 were reported to have been injured by a shell strike on an empty neighbouring house on Saturday evening hours after the Israeli army had given it the all-clear for people to move back. There were reports of a strike on a house in western Beit Lahiya on Sunday that was said to have left three dead.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, said on Saturday that Israel's military action would continue for as long and with as much force as necessary to stop Hamas rocket attacks, even though the army has said its stated mission of destroying tunnels was virtually complete.
He also blamed the Palestinian casualties - which on Sunday stood at more than 1,800 dead, compared with 64 Israeli soldiers and three civilians in Israel - on Hamas, the Islamist group that dominates Gaza.
"Hamas wants the residents of Gaza to suffer and be hurt and thinks that the world will blame Israel for their suffering.," he said. "There are many people in the world who understand exactly what Hamas is.
"But, unfortunately, there are other voices and to them I say: Terrorism has no borders.
"Will you stand alongside Israel, a democratic and moral state which is acting to defend its citizens?"
However, the US added its voice to condemnation of the school attack. A spokeswoman for the State Department urged Israel to live up to its own standards of avoiding civilian casualties.
The suspicion that militants are operating nearby does not justify strikes that put at risk the lives of so many innocent civilians," she added.