JERUSALEM: A senior UN official said Saturday that teachers and other UN staff working in Gaza fear they are now targets after an Israeli air strike hit a school-turned-shelter in the territory this week.
Wednesday’s strike on the UN-run Al-Jawni School in central Gaza, which is housing displaced Palestinians, killed 18 people. including six employees of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
It was the deadliest single incident for the agency in more than 11 months of war and drew international condemnation.
“One colleague said that they’re not wearing the UNRWA vest anymore because they feel that that turns them into a target,” UNRWA senior deputy director Sam Rose told AFP on Saturday after visiting the shelter in Nuseirat.
“Another one said that that morning, their children had stopped them from coming into the shelter,” he said in an online interview from Gaza.
The colleagues were gathering for a post-work meal in a classroom when the strike flattened part of the building, leaving only a charred heap of rebar and concrete.
“A son of one of the staff had brought a meal into the building,” Rose said, adding the group then debated whether to eat it in the principal’s office before settling on what appeared to be a classroom decorated with pictures of scientists.
“They were eating when the bomb hit.”
The Israeli military said it had conducted a “precise strike” on Hamas militants within the school grounds and had taken steps to reduce the risk to civilians.
The Israeli military published what it said was a list of nine militants killed in the Nuseirat strike, including three it said were employees of UNRWA.
An Israeli government spokesman said the school had become “a legitimate target” because it was used by Hamas to launch attacks.
Rose said such statements further battered morale among UN staffers still at the school, where thousands have sought shelter from a war that has displaced nearly all of Gaza’s 2.4 million population at least once.
“They were particularly angry by the allegations that had been made as to the involvement of their colleagues in extremist and terrorist activities,” Rose said.
“They felt that this really was a stain on the memory of dear colleagues, dear friends,” he added, describing the mood as “bereft” and “desperate.”
UNRWA has said at least 220 members of the agency’s staff have been killed in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, which was triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7.
The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
The militants also seized 251 hostages, 97 of whom are still in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliation has killed at least 41,182 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
On Friday, UNRWA announced one of its employees was killed during an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank, the first such death in the territory in more than a decade.
UNRWA has more than 30,000 employees in the Palestinian territories and elsewhere.
It has been in crisis since Israel accused a dozen of its employees of being involved in the October 7 attack.
The UN immediately fired the implicated staff members, and a probe found some “neutrality related issues” but stressed Israel had not provided evidence for its main allegations.

TEL AVIV: Thousands of people again took to the streets of Israel’s main cities on Saturday in a bid to increase pressure on the government to secure the release of hostages in Gaza.
Of 251 captives seized during Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that triggered the ongoing war, 97 are still held in the Gaza Strip including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
Weekly rallies have sought to keep up pressure on the Israeli government, accused by critics of stalling on a deal to free the remaining hostages.
Protest organizers say crowd sizes have swelled this month after an announcement by Israeli authorities that six hostages whose bodies were recovered by troops had been shot dead by militants in a southern Gaza tunnel.
One of the six was Alexander Lobanov, whose wife Michal on Saturday addressed the crowd in Israel’s commercial hub of Tel Aviv, asking why the government did not “do everything” to bring him back alive.
“It was possible to save them, to rescue them through a deal,” she said, according to excerpts of her remarks provided by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group.
“True, it’s not as heroic as a military rescue, but it’s a different kind of bravery.”
Thousands of people joined the rally in Tel Aviv and another in Jerusalem, seat of the Israeli parliament, AFP correspondents said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is facing rising anger from critics who accuse him of not doing enough to secure a truce deal that would see hostages exchanged for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
The vast majority of the hostages freed so far were released during a one-week truce in November. Israeli forces have rescued alive just eight.
The October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign to destroy Hamas has killed at least 41,182 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Talks mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar to reach a deal between Israel and Hamas have stalled for months.
Demonstration organizer Noa Ben Baruch, 48, told AFP in Tel Aviv that “the urgency is unparallelled. It’s not only the hostages, it’s everything.”
As the war rages on for more than 11 months with no end in sight, “there is no point to it anymore,” she said.
“This war has to end yesterday. It’s futile.”
Around her members of the crowd waved Israeli flags and signs that read “Bring them home,” “Seal the deal,” “End the bloodshed” and “They trust us to get them out of hell.”
A group of women wore black t-shirts and jeans stained with fake blood, recreating a widely circulated picture of soldier Naama Levy taken when she was abducted on October 7.
In both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the names of hostages were read out on loudspeakers.
Tel Aviv resident Ran Eisenberg, 77, said rescuing them should be the government’s top priority.
“The fact that it doesn’t happen really makes me very frustrated,” he said.