Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com – 2014-07-30 02:50:55
Israel Attacks Third UN School in Gaza, Dozens Killed
Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com
(July 29, 2014) — Still struggling to get their stories straight on the last two times they did it, Israeli tanks attacked yet another UN-run girls’ school in the Gaza Strip, killing dozens of civilians.
The UN school, in the Jabalia refugee camp, was one of 85 sites the UN is operating as civilian refugee centers, with hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians packed into tiny spaces that they were hoping, in vain, would not be targeted by the Israeli military.
Earlier today, the UN reported finding rockets stored in one of their other schools, but in a closed school not being used as a refugee center. The Israeli government has cited this in the past as a pretext for their attacks on the other sites. No rockets have been found in any of the open schools.
The attacks on UN schools and civilian targets in general have been fueling international outrage at the Gaza onslaught, which is overwhelmingly killing innocent civilians, and large numbers of them children.
Israel Broadens Targets in Gaza War: 1,260 Killed
Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com
(July 29, 2014) — Israel continues escalating its attacks against the Gaza Strip today, broadening its targets to include the strip’s only power plant, knocking out electricity for the 1.8 million Gazans for what officials say will be at least a year.
The growing onslaught also has the civilian death toll once again spiking, with at least 1,260 Gazans now confirmed killed, overwhelmingly civilians, and over 7,000 others wounded. Well over 200 of the slain are children under the age of 18.
On the Israeli side, the death toll stands at 56, with 53 of them soldiers involved in combat operations against the Gaza Strip, and three civilians. The real humanitarian toll goes well beyond the directly killed and wounded.
The UN officials in Gaza reported a “huge surge” in refugees seeking to hide in 85 UN-run shelters across the strip, saying there are now more than 200,000 civilians packed in those few nominally safe zones.
The safety of the UN-run shelters is very much in doubt, as Israel has attacked them over the course of the war already, and as they order more and more civilians from their homes, no real “safe zones” exist for them.
Whether in shelters or in their homes, the Gazans are facing growing shortages of food and water, and the destruction of the power plant means not only an end to electricity in the strip, but will bring most water pumping stations offline, leading to calls to carefully ration fresh water.
Israel Attacks Gaza’s Only Power Plant, Knocking Out Power for a Year
Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com
(July 29, 2014) — Adding to the humanitarian calamity in the ongoing Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, the nation’s military attacked Gaza’s only power plant, a diesel-fueled plant which provides roughly two-thirds of electricity for the strip’s 1.8 million people.
Lack of reliable fuel supplies have kept the plant running only intermittently, and locals were reporting only about three hours of electricity a day. Now, they’re down to basically none.
The director of the Gaza City electricity authority confirmed “the power plant is finished,” and that it will likely take a full year or more before it is repaired enough to resume generation.
The problem is even deeper than just electricity for civilian homes, as the water pumps in the strip also ground to a halt today for lack of power. Gaza City officials are urging civilians to carefully ration water consumption, and prepare for shortages.
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