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No militants in bombed school: U.N.

DUBAI: The United Nations has denied Israel’s assertion that Palestinian militants were hiding in the school that Israeli soldiers shelled on Tuesday night.

Three tank shells exploded inside and around the U.N.-run school, killing 42 persons.

Christopher Gunness, spokesperson of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which runs the school, said his organisation was “99.9 percent certain” that neither militants were present nor any militant activity had been taking place inside the attacked school.

The school, called Fakhura, had been converted into a U.N. refugee camp to house around 400 people who had been displaced by the Gaza conflict which began on December 27. Around 15 hours before this strike, an Israeli missile had attacked another U.N.-run school — Asma — located in the Shati refugee camp north of Gaza. Three members of the Al-Sultan family, who were refugees, were killed in that strike.

Mr. Gunness demanded “an independent investigation to establish the facts.” “If the rules of war had been broken those found guilty must be brought to justice,” he observed.

The Israeli military on Tuesday released video footage of a 2007 incident which showed Palestinian militants firing from the school and fleeing from the scene with a rocket launcher. Mr. Gunness said that there was no connection between the 2007 video and Tuesday night’s attack.

He said that UNRWA had given in advance to the Israeli military, the coordinates of all the 23 schools that housed around 14,000 refugees.

A day after the carnage in Fakhura school, Israel announced that it was opening a humanitarian corridor which would be used to bring in essential supplies for Gaza residents. The passage will remain open for three hours every day between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m., during which period military operations would be halted.

Palestinian fighters and Israeli troops continued to clash on Wednesday. Fierce battles were being fought in the northern Gaza Strip and around two refugee camps — Sajaiyeh and Jabalya in the eastern part of Gaza City.

Meanwhile, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has announced that Israel has accepted a Franco-Egyptian ceasefire plan for Gaza. The Palestinian Authority led by President Mahmoud Abbas had also accepted the plan, he said. However, Hamas has been non-committal on the proposal so far. Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official based in Lebanon was quoted as saying: “We are discussing all the initiatives that have been put forward. We cannot say there is a specific decision on this initiative,” he said.

Another senior Hamas leader, Moussa Abou Marzouk, told Associated Press that his group was studying peace proposals, but rejected a permanent ceasefire with Israel. He said there could be no discussions on a permanent truce so long as there was Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. In a defiant address in Beirut on Wednesday, Lebanese Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah urged Palestinians not to rely on the international community to solve their problems, but pursue the path of resistance till their goals were achieved. He said “the international community is incapable of condemning a massacre in a U.N. institution in Gaza…If this is the case, how will this international community be fair to any cause?”

Hasan Suroor reports from London

With Israel continuing to defy appeals for an end to its invasion of Gaza, pressure is mounting on the European Union to take more concrete measures such as suspending a proposed cooperation agreement with Israel and imposing an arms embargo.

Nearly 100 British MPs signed a letter calling for an end to the “slaughter in Gaza” and urging Prime Minister Gordon Brown to condemn unequivocally the continuing Israeli attacks. They wanted him to act unilaterally to ban all arms exports to Israel if other E.U. members failed to do so. “Brown must halt Britain’s arms exports to Israel, and persuade our E.U. counterparts to do the same,” said the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg.

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