More than 100 Palestinians were killed yesterday in one of the most blood soaked days in the wretched Gaza Strip, among them victims of Israeli fire on a crowded market and a United Nations school.
The United Nations condemned the school shelling and Hamas said it fired rockets into Israel in retaliation for both attacks. But hours after the condemnation the US said it had agreed to sell Israel fresh ammunition to replenish its dwindling supplies. At least 17 people were killed in the strike on the market in Shejaiya, near Gaza City, as Israel observed a four-hour humanitarian lull in other parts of the crowded coastal strip.
At least 200 people were wounded in the strike, medics said, on a day that saw at least 111 people killed.
Early Thursday two more people died of wounds sustained previously, bringing the death toll from 23 days of unrelenting Israeli attacks to 1,363.
The market strike came hours after Israeli shells slammed into a UN school in Jabalia refugee camp which was sheltering some 3,300 homeless Gazans, killing 16 and drawing a furious response from the United Nations.
“This morning a UN school sheltering thousands of Palestinian families suffered a reprehensible attack,” UN chief Ban Ki-moon said on a visit to Costa Rica.
“It is unjustifiable, and demands accountability and justice.”
The Pentagon later said it had granted an Israeli request for ammunition, including some from a stockpile stored by the US military on the ground in Israel for “emergency use” by the Zionist entity.
But Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said in a statement that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told his Israeli counterpart Moshe Yaalon that he was concerned about the deadly consequences of the spiralling conflict, and called for a ceasefire and end to hostilities.
Rights group Amnesty International had urged Washington to halt arms supplies to Israel.
“It is time for the US government to urgently suspend arms transfers to Israel and to push for a UN arms embargo on all parties to the conflict,” it said in a petition to US Secretary of State John Kerry. The transfer of munitions came about after the petition was received by the US govt.
