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Press release

School for Blind Children in Gaza Severely Damaged by Israeli Bombardment

Date: 07 march 2002

Ref:  32/2002

PCHR notes with dismay an Israeli air strike on a Palestinian police station in Gaza city that severely damaged a nearby school for blind children.  The attack highlights the precarious state of Palestinian children, a segment of the population that has been particularly affected and traumatized by Israeli attacks during the al-Aqsa Intifada.

Israeli combat aircraft bombed the Gaza civil police headquarters in a densely populated civilian residential area on 5 March.  The nearby al-Nour Centre for the Rehabilitation of the Blind, run by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and flying a UN flag, was severely damaged and rendered unusable during the raid.

The al-Nour Centre serves approximately 350 children from throughout the Gaza strip and is the only facility of its kind in the Gaza strip.  UNRWA Commissioner General Peter Hansen visited the Centre after the attack and, after meeting with children there, promised to seek compensation from the Israeli government for the damage done to the building.

PCHR is alarmed at the increasing regularity of Israeli air strikes in densely populated civilian residential areas in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and condemns attacks against civil installations carried out without regard to the effects on nearby individuals or buildings, especially schools.  Such air strikes, often aimed at empty Palestinian National Authority (PNA) institutions but also damaging nearby homes and civilian facilities, are an indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force, and are not justified by military necessity.

PCHR reiterates that Palestinian children, a particularly vulnerable part of the civilian population, have not been immune from Israeli attacks during the al-Aqsa Intifada.  Nearly a quarter of all Palestinians killed by Israeli occupation forces since October 2000 have been under age 18.  Shelling of schools and hospitals, as well as Israel’s comprehensive siege and closure policy, have also dramatically restricted access to education and health facilities badly needed by Palestinian children.  Moreover, Palestinian children have suffered widespread mental and emotional trauma and stress from Israeli attacks.

To read testimonies taken from the site in the aftermath of the bombing, please visit PCHR’s website at http://www.pchrgaza.org/special/testimonies.htm.