The UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories has castigated Israel for burning alive “so many people – so many children” in the Gaza Strip, where the regime is waging a genocidal war on Palestinians.
Francesca Albanese made the remarks in an X post on Monday, after an Israeli airstrike killed at least 36 people, including 18 children, at Gaza City’s Fahmi al-Jarjawi school, where displaced families had been seeking refuge from ongoing bombardments by the occupation’s military.
Many of the victims were burned alive as they slept at the school shelter.
A video recorded at the scene of the attack showed the silhouette of a young girl trudging through rubble to escape the blaze. She survived the carnage, but lost her family members.
Albanese attached the video to her post, saying she “can’t look at fire anymore without feeling sick to my stomach.”
“We must stop this massacre,” she added. “May the Palestinians forgive us.”
Gaza Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said the school was supposed to be “a place of safety,” but it was “turned into an inferno.”
“We heard desperate cries for help from people trapped alive inside the blaze, but the fire was too intense. We couldn’t get to them,” he noted.
Israel launched its genocide in Gaza on October 7, 2023, after the Hamas resistance group carried out a historic operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
More than 19 months into its aggression, the Tel Aviv regime has failed to achieve its declared objectives in Gaza despite killing at least 53,977 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring 122,966 others.
Israel has repeatedly bombed school-turned-shelters in Gaza in violation of international humanitarian law that forbids attacks on civilian infrastructure.
Without providing any evidence, the Israeli military claimed that the Fahmi al-Jarjawi school was a “command and control center” for Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movements.