UN strongly protests Israeli air raid that damaged Gaza school for blind

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) today said it had protested in the “strongest possible terms” to the Israeli Government over damage done by last night’s bombing raid to an Agency-run school for the blind in Gaza City.

The award-winning Al-Nour Rehabilitation Centre for the Visually Impaired – the only institution of its kind in the Gaza Strip – was “extensively damaged” by flying debris and the explosive force of the air raid by F-16 bombers on the night of 5 March, UNRWA said in a statement released in Gaza. At least 15 classrooms were rendered unusable, dozens of windows were blown out and a children’s playground and garden had been “turned from an oasis of calm into a wasteland of twisted metal and rubble.”

In addition, the Agency said that during the Israeli incursion, heavy pieces of shrapnel blew though the windows of the school and in one case landed in the kindergarten used during the day by four- and five-year olds with sight problems.

Last night’s attack was not the first to damage the school, which has received the Sharjah Award for Excellence for its innovative treatment of children with special needs. Israeli bombing raids affected the institution – which sits adjacent to the Gaza police headquarters – on five previous occasions, according to UNRWA.

“The only thing that could have been damaged by such a raid was the blind school because the police headquarters had already been hit five times,” UNRWA Commissioner General Peter Hansen said, stressing that in lodging its strong protest with the Israeli authorities, the Agency would seek reimbursement for the damage.

“Under the terms of international conventions Israel has a duty to safeguard UN installations and personnel,” he said, calling bombing raids in heavily populated civilian areas next to a school flying a UN flag “totally unacceptable.”

The damage to the school comes just days after two UNRWA schools in Balata and Jenin camps in the West Bank were temporarily taken over by Israeli forces, causing damage to both centres of learning.