The bodies of a baby and three children in a freezer at the morgue in Rafah, Gaza Sunday. They died along with other family members after their houses were hit by an Israeli military strike. — AFP GAZA CITY, Aug 03 (AFP): At least 10 people died in a fresh strike on a UN school in Gaza Sunday shortly after Israel confirmed it had begun withdrawing some troops from the war-torn enclave.
The strike on the school sheltering displaced Palestinians in the southern city of Rafah came as Israel pounded the region following the suspected capture of a soldier by militants, who was later declared dead.
It was the third time in 10 days that a UN school had been hit and came four days after Israeli tank shells slammed into a school in the northern town of Jabaliya, killing 16 in an attack furiously denounced by UN chief Ban Ki-moon as "reprehensible".
An AFP correspondent said there were scenes of chaos at the site, with rescuers trying to evacuate the wounded any way they could, while adults were seen sprinting frantically away through pools of blood, young children clutched in their arms.
Chris Gunness, spokesman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said the school had been housing thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs) who had been forced to flee their homes by the ongoing violence in Gaza.
"Shelling incident in vicinity of UNRWA school in Rafah sheltering almost 3,000 IDP. Initial reports say multiple deaths and injury," he wrote on his Twitter feed.
Images of the carnage in Gaza, where medics say 1,766 Palestinians have been killed and another 9,320 wounded in the past 27 days, have shocked the public worldwide with British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond demanding an unconditional ceasefire to resolve the "intolerable" situation for civilians trapped in Gaza".
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