Airstrike Near U.N. School Kills 10, Gaza Officials Say [Read More]

The Israeli military continued its substantial military attacks around Rafah in southern Gaza on Sunday, with Palestinian officials reporting that a strike near the entrance of a United Nations school sheltering displaced people killed 10 people and wounded 35 others.

Witnesses said those killed or hurt were waiting in line for food supplies when a missile hit. A photographer said the target appeared to be a motorcycle near the entrance of the school in the center of Rafah. About 3,000 Palestinians in the area, where the Israeli military has been battling Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters, had been sheltering in the school.

The Israeli military had no immediate comment, and the United Nations said it was not immediately clear where the strike originated.

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Mohammed Muafai, who works for the United Nations there, said that he was in the school when the missile hit. In a telephone interview, he said bodies were on the ground, including two guards and a sanitation worker. He said seven more people from displaced families also died, including one selling flavored ice.

Dr. Abdullah Shehada, director of the Abu Youssef Al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, which was vacated and whose functions were moved to a smaller hospital, the Kuwaiti Specialized Hospital, said more than 30 of the injured were brought to the smaller institution. “We call for halting the Israeli operation around Abu Youssef Al-Najjar so we can return,” he said.

Last Wednesday, 21 Palestinians who sought refuge in a United Nations-run school in the Jabaliya refugee camp were killed, health ministry officials said, in a series of predawn strikes. The Israeli military has said that it did not target the school and that Palestinian fighters were operating within 200 yards of the shelter that morning.

After an earlier strike on a school serving as a shelter in Beit Hanoun killed 16, the Israelis acknowledged they had fired a mortar that hit the courtyard, which was empty at the time.

Earlier on Sunday, airstrikes killed at least 30 Palestinians, medics and witnesses said. The deadliest strikes hit homes in Rafah and in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza Strip.

Ashraf al-Qedra, a spokesman for the Palestinian Health Ministry, said that nine members of a family were killed in an air attack in Rafah. At midnight Saturday, before the attacks on Sunday, the health ministry put the cumulative death toll in Gaza at 1,712.

Israeli officials on Sunday defended their decision to announce the death of a missing Israeli soldier at 2 a.m., only hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on national television that he had no new information about the case.

Army spokesmen said on Sunday that the declaration of the death of Second Lt. Hadar Goldin, 23, was made as soon as possible and that DNA tests had been carried out on partial remains found after the lieutenant and two colleagues were attacked by a Hamas squad that emerged from a tunnel on Friday. One of the Hamas fighters had exploded a suicide belt.

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Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, the army spokesman, said that tests were done “on items found on the field” and in the tunnel into which the Hamas squad had retreated with the lieutenant, including his bloody uniform, leading to fears that he had been captured alive.

We can’t determine if he was killed on the ground or from the blast,” Colonel Lerner said. “The indications on the ground are that he was killed in the initial attack.”

He said that the tests had been carried out during the Sabbath because it was an emergency situation. The relatives of Lieutenant Goldin made emotional appeals earlier on Saturday, before Mr. Netanyahu spoke, that Israel and its army not leave the lieutenant behind, and they had said they believed he was still alive.

His funeral is expected later on Sunday. Lieutenant Goldin’s case is unlike others in which there were no remains, Colonel Lerner said, referring to an earlier episode in which another Israeli soldier had been feared captured and was later declared dead. The Goldin family will have some remains to bury.

“There were remains found also in the tunnel,” Colonel Lerner said. “That led us to think that there is the possibility that” the Hamas squad members “have body parts.”

For its part, Hamas’s military wing, while taking credit for the operation, said on Saturday that it had no information about the lieutenant and had lost contact with its squad, suggesting that all involved were dead. On Friday, Israeli forces immediately used a protocol for captured soldiers known as “Operation Hannibal” to pursue the Hamas squad into the tunnel and try to cut off any possibility of escape.

Hannibal includes intense pursuit and an option to engage the enemy “even at risk of the soldier,” Colonel Lerner said.

Israel has said that the attack occurred during an agreed cease-fire with Hamas; Hamas has said variously that it took place before the cease-fire went into effect and that it had never agreed to a cease-fire that would allow Israel to continue destroying the tunnel system. But the episode put an end to a cease-fire effort pressed by Washington and the United Nations.

Two other Israelis were killed in the attack: a company commander, Maj. Benaya Sarel, and a radioman, Staff Sgt. Liel Gidoni. The soldiers who entered the tunnel said that one shaft led to a mosque and the other to a Hamas bunker.

Lieutenant Goldin is a relative of Mr. Yaalon’s: Mr. Yaalon’s grandfather and Lieutenant Goldin’s grandmother were brother and sister. Mr. Yaalon also lectured at Lieutenant Goldin’s school. Israel’s military censor had blocked publication of that detail of their family relationship until the death was announced on Sunday, concerned that Hamas might profit from that knowledge and demand a higher price for the officer’s return.

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International journalists must agree in writing to comply with the censorship system in order to work in Jerusalem; Friday was the first time in more than six years that the censor had contacted The New York Times.

Later Sunday, Mr. Yaalon posted on Twitter in Hebrew: “Hadar Goldin of blessed memory was a member of my family. I have known him since he was born. He and IDF fighters who fell went to battle to return the quiet and the security to Israel. I embrace the families.”

Israel’s military operation will continue, Colonel Lerner said. “There is no end in sight,” he said. “The reality on the ground can take us in either direction.”

But he confirmed that once the operations to destroy the tunnels were completed, which he said could take 24 hours, some Israeli troops would redeploy away from populated areas and take up positions near the Israeli border with Gaza. “We are moving forces to different locations, but it will still let us carry out operational activities on the ground as required,” he said.

On Saturday evening, Mr. Netanyahu declared that Israel was achieving its goals and could alter its tactics. “We promised to return the quiet to Israel’s citizens, and we will continue to act until that aim is achieved,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “We will take as much time as necessary, and will exert as much force as needed.”

Israel is not ending its operation unilaterally, he said, adding: “We will deploy in the places most convenient to us to reduce friction on I.D.F. soldiers, because we care about them.”

Israeli television reports on Saturday said that some Israel Defense Forces troops were pulling out of Gaza, and that Israel had informed Palestinians in Beit Lahiya and al-Atatra, in northern Gaza, that it was now safe to return to their homes.