IDF rules out Israeli airstrike as cause of death of 9 civilians at UN shelter, announces probe

Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday evening denied accusations made by UN officials that the IDF carried out a strike on a United Nations compound in Gaza that caused “mass casualties,” and vowed to further investigate the incident.

After U.S. officials strongly condemned the incident in a press briefing, Israeli army officials stated, “After an inspection of operational systems, the IDF has now ruled out the possibility that the incident was caused by an airstrike or artillery fire by IDF forces.”

“At the same time, the IDF is conducting an in-depth examination of ground forces’ activity in the area of ​​the facility… The IDF is investigating the possibility that the strike was caused by Hamas fire,” the IDF added.

Thomas White, the director of Gaza affairs for UNRWA, claimed that two tank shells hit one of the agency’s buildings where some 800 displaced Palestinians were sheltering, killing at least nine people and wounding around 75 more.

Several U.S. officials condemned the strike in unusually strong terms, without explicitly placing the blame on Israel.

U.S. State Department Spokesperson Vedant Patel said: “We deplore today’s attack on the U.N.’s Khan Younis training center.”

“Civilians must be protected, and the protected nature of U.N. facilities must be respected, and humanitarian workers must be protected so that they can continue providing civilians with the life-saving humanitarian assistance that they need,” Patel added.

“We are gravely concerned by reports today of strikes hitting a UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) facility – with subsequent reports of fires in the building – in a neighborhood in southern Gaza where more than 30,000 displaced Palestinians had reportedly been sheltering,” Adrienne Watson, said U.S. National Security Council spokeswoman on Thursday.

“While we don’t yet have all the details on what happened and will continue to seek further information regarding today’s incidents,” Watson added.

The vocational training facility in the town of Khan Younis in southern Gaza houses approximately 30,000 people, most of whom fled south as a result of the Israeli ground campaign into Gaza.

UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini claimed that the death toll from the strike was probably higher. “The compound is a clearly marked U.N. facility and its coordinates were shared with Israeli Authorities as we do for all our facilities. Once again, a blatant disregard of basic rules of war,” Lazzarini said.

Jonathan Conricus, an official IDF spokesman until recently, and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the New York Sun: “Every UNRWA school we entered had Hamas weapons in it. Each one was a place for Hamas to hide in and fight from.”

Khan Younis is one of the main battlegrounds in the fighting at the moment, and the IDF reportedly launched a major offensive into the western part of the city this week, deploying large forces.

In an earlier statement on Wednesday, the Israeli army said the area around the UNRWA compound served as a significant base for Hamas terrorists.

“Dismantling Hamas’s military framework in western Khan Younis is at the heart of the logic behind the operation,” the IDF stated.