Borrell calls for independent investigation into Israeli raid on Gaza school
Fourteen children killed in Nurseirat. The alarm from Doctors Without Borders: "The patients are on the floor, the bodies are not taken to the morgue"
ROME – The Israeli bombing which hit a United Nations school in the Nuseirat refugee camp this morning “requires an independent investigation, in line with the latest order of the International Court of Justice” ” strong>: this is what the high representative of European foreign policy, Josep Borrell, said. “Reports coming from Gaza”, added Borrell in a series of ‘X’ posts, “demonstrate repeatedly that violence and suffering are still the only reality for hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. The ceasefire permanent is the only way forward to protect civilians and obtain the immediate release of all hostages”. Borrell cited the ruling of the ICJ, the United Nations court which has already issued three orders since January as part of the proceedings initiated after the complaint from South Africa, which accused Tel Aviv of genocide in the Strip of Gaza. In the latest, he ordered the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to put an end to the attacks in Rafah, in the south, and to facilitate once and for all the entry of humanitarian aid, which has become extremely complex following the closure of border crossings and due of the introduction of selection procedures that slow down convoys, or leave them out.
Meanwhile, the death toll from the bombing with which the Israeli army hit the Nuseirat school, managed by the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), has risen to 40. According to the Gaza authorities, among the victims there are 14 children and nine women. The Tel Aviv army justified the raid by claiming that between twenty and thirty Hamas and Islamic Brigade fighters were hiding inside the structure. An investigation by Al Jazeera reports that the missiles used against the school are those that include a guidance system supplied by the United States, Tel Aviv’s main supplier of armaments. Among the first to report the attack this morning were the health officials of the Al-Aqsa hospital, not far from the school. Doctors Without Borders says in a note that, according to its medical director in Gaza, Dr. Karin Huster, “the hospital is reduced to a sinking ship”. Huster continues: “In the emergency room supported by MSF the situation is even worse than yesterday. In the red zone, where the most critical patients are visited, there are scenes of devastation. The patients are on the floor, there is blood everywhere, there are no beds, the corpses are not taken to the morguebecause it is overloaded. We have to find a way to get the patients into the hospital and treat them among the dead”.
The doctor continues: “It’s absolute chaos, the hospital is a sinking ship. In the operating room, the patients injured in last night’s bombings lie on the ground on stretchers, waiting for a place in the operating room. emergency room there is no capacity to do triage and unfortunately several cases arrive who – given the capacity of the hospital and the situation in Gaza in general – will die.” Karin Huster claims that “it is incredibly difficult for emergency room nurses and doctors not to give even a shred of hope. And so they try to take patients to the operating room, but then unfortunately they have to give the bad news of death to the families.” In Gaza, concludes the MSF manager, “there are no other functioning hospitals and patients cannot be transferred to other facilities to receive treatment. And so, wounded after wounded, the patients who arrive in Al -Aqsa in critical condition, they remain in Al-Aqsa and die in Al-Aqsa. Yet, as our colleagues say, we do not give up. But I don’t know how long we can resist.”