"Just before seven o'clock this morning (0500 GMT) several rounds of shells went directly into the school compound in Beit Lahiya. There was a pause and then there was a round that directly hit the school building killing two people," said UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness.
"Where you have a direct hit on an UNRWA school where about 1,600 people had taken refuge, where the Israeli army knows the coordinates and knows who's there, where this comes as the latest in a catalogue of direct and indirect attacks on UNRWA facilities, there have to be investigations to establish whether war crimes have been committed," he said."
Source
Picture Source
That looks awfully like White Phosperus being dropped on the school's playground. (See Update Below)
"United Nations officials say two children, aged five and seven, were killed when Israeli tank fire hit a UN school where hundreds had taken shelter in the northern town of Beit Lahiya."
Source
Israel's total disdain for the lifes of Palestinians, as it has showed over and over again (not only in this latest conflict) should be a wake-up call to all those who so vehemently defend its actions.
Update: Text from the 3rd Protocol, Articles 1 & 2 of the Geneva Conventions:
Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons (Protocol III). Geneva, 10 October 1980.
Definitions
For the purpose of this Protocol:
- "Incendiary weapon" means any weapon or munition which is primarily designed to set fire to objects or to cause burn injury to persons through the action of flame, heat, or combination thereof, produced by a chemical reaction of a substance delivered on the target. (a) Incendiary weapons can take the form of, for example, flame throwers, fougasses, shells, rockets, grenades, mines, bombs and other containers of incendiary substances.
(b) Incendiary weapons do not include:
(i) Munitions which may have incidental incendiary effects, such as illuminants, tracers, smoke or signalling systems;
According to Wikipedia, White Phosperus (WP) is an incendiary device. WP can therefor not be regarded as munition with 'incidental incendiary effects', as described in the Geneva Convention's exclusions. Whether it is used to produce smoke is irrelevant; it's incendiary capabilities are well known.
- "Concentration of civilians" means any concentration of civilians, be it permanent or temporary, such as in inhabited parts of cities, or inhabited towns or villages, or as in camps or columns of refugees or evacuees, or groups of nomads.
- "Feasible precautions" are those precautions which are practicable or practically possible taking into account all circumstances ruling at the time, including humanitarian and military considerations.
Protection of civilians and civilian objects
- It is prohibited in all circumstances to make the civilian population as such, individual civilians or civilian objects the object of attack by incendiary weapons.
- It is prohibited in all circumstances to make any military objective located within a concentration of civilians the object of attack by air-delivered incendiary weapons.
- It is further prohibited to make any military objective located within a concentration of civilians the object of attack by means of incendiary weapons other than air-delivered incendiary weapons, except when such military objective is clearly separated from the concentration of civilians and all feasible precautions are taken with a view to limiting the incendiary effects to the military objective and to avoiding, and in any event to minimizing, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects.