Israeli military actions killed 44 Palestinian civilians who had sought refuge in seven UN schools during last summer’s conflict in Gaza, the UN said on Monday in releasing findings of an internal inquiry.
It also found that no weapons had been found inside those UN schools, but rather in three other UN-run schools that were vacant at the time and that were used by Hamas militants to stash arms and were “probably” sites from which rockets were fired at Israel.
The internal inquiry is the first UN report to come out of the 50-day Gaza conflict last summer between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants affiliated with Hamas and other groups, which devastated the territory of 1.8 million people.
The conflict left more than 2,200 Palestinians dead, and 72 were killed on the Israeli side, including 66 soldiers.
It sharply raised tensions between Israel and the UN.
UN officials said they had repeatedly communicated the locations of facilities harboring civilians to the Israeli military.
The UN released a summary of the inquiry along with a letter about its findings by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to the Security Council, criticizing the Israelis for attacking “inviolable” facilities of the organization in Gaza and criticizing Hamas for “unacceptable” misuse of those facilities.
Neither the summary nor Ban’s letter explicitly accused the antagonists of having violated international law, and emphasized that the board of inquiry was not a court. However, the finding that Israeli actions killed civilians who had taken shelter in schools might serve to buttress the Palestinian Authority’s intention to hold Israel accountable at the International Criminal Court.
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that it was studying the summary and noted that it “clearly documents the exploitation by terrorist organizations of UN facilities in the Gaza Strip.”
Only the summary of the findings from the 207-page report was made public.
The inquiry into last year’s conflict, led by Dutch Major General Patrick Cammaert, found that the seven schools used as emergency shelters faced in some instances a barrage of “high explosive projectiles,” mortar rounds, and, in one instance, a precision guided missile that landed “5 to 6m from the school gate,” killing 15 people nearby.
The board looked at episodes in Gaza from July 8 to Aug. 26 last year. The report summary said Israeli military officials informed the board that UN sites were not their targets and that they were instead aiming at Hamas arsenals.
The report also found that Hamas militants had endangered UN facilities by storing weapons in three empty schools that were not being used to shelter civilians.
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