Reuters

Gaza

Israeli shelling killed at least 15 Palestinians sheltering in a UN-run school and another 17 near a street market yesterday, with no ceasefire in sight after more than three weeks of fighting.

Israel’s security cabinet decided to continue its offensive in the enclave and there was no sign of a halt to a 23-day conflict in which 1,346 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have died. On the Israeli side, 56 soldiers and three civilians have been killed.

Some 3,300 Palestinians, including many women and children, were taking refuge in the school in Jabalya refugee camp when it came under fire around dawn, the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said.

Blood splattered floors and mattresses inside classrooms at the Jabalya Girls Elementary School and survivors picked through shattered glass and debris for flesh and body parts to bury.

“I call on the international community to take deliberate international political action to put an immediate end to the continuing carnage,” UNRWA chief Pierre Krahenbuhl said.

The Gaza health ministry put the number of dead in the school attack at 15, with more than 100 wounded. The UN said 16 people were killed.

An Israeli military spokeswoman claimed resistance fighters had fired mortar bombs from the vicinity of the school and troops shot back in response.

The army said three Israeli soldiers were killed yesterday when a booby-trap bomb exploded in a tunnel shaft they had uncovered in a residence in the southern Gaza Strip.

UNRWA said on Tuesday it had found a cache of rockets concealed at another Gaza school - the third such discovery since the conflict began. It condemned unnamed groups for putting civilians at risk.

Krahenbuhl said the Jabalya school’s precise location and the fact that it was sheltering thousands of displaced people had been communicated to the Israeli military 17 times, with the last notification just hours before the fatal shelling.

In a separate incident, Israeli shelling killed at least 17 people and wounded about 160 others near a fruit and vegetable market in  Shejaiya, a heavily-bombarded neighbourhood on the eastern outskirts of the city of Gaza.

“Such a massacre requires an earthquake-like response,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said.

Qatar condemns indiscriminate bombing

 Qatar has condemned the indiscriminate bombing pursued by Israel in its aggression on the Gaza Strip which wrecked hospitals, schools of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) and houses of civilians.

In a statement, issued yesterday, the Foreign Ministry underlined that “the Israeli aggression has turned into a series of horrific massacres of civilians that has shocked the whole world,” the official Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported. The statement said “the deafness of the international institutions to the screams of distress of the children of Gaza is a stain of shame on the forehead of the institutions, foremost of which being the UN Security Council”.

It called for the halt of aggression, opening of crossings and lifting of the siege clamped on the steadfast Palestinian people in Gaza.