At least 220 agency staff have been killed in Gaza since the Hamas-Israel war began in October 2023. UNRWA Acting Commissioner-General Christian Saunders said the safety of humanitarian staff, premises and operations had been blatantly disregarded since the beginning of the war. “The longer impunity prevails, the more international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions will become irrelevant,” he said. Thousands killed and injured Since the fragile 10 October 2025 ceasefire agreement, local authorities have reported 1,334 deaths and 4,429 injuries in Gaza, according to the UN emergency relief agency, OCHA. The UN’s safety and security partners reported military operations, including airstrikes, shelling, gunfire and naval fire, continued across all parts of Gaza over the weekend, particularly west of the so-called “yellow line” Israel established at the start of the ceasefire agreement. Airstrikes trigger displacement Israeli airstrikes and other attacks continued to hit populated areas, causing casualties and property damage and driving further displacement, according to OCHA’s latest humanitarian update. Currently, nine in 10 people in Gaza are internally displaced, including people who have been repeatedly displaced. Overcrowding, inadequate shelter and limited access to safe water and sanitation are increasing the risk of communicable disease transmission in Gaza, particularly respiratory...

An analyst’s missed remarks and U.S. intelligence systems that weren’t connected to one another are among the missteps that investigators have surfaced while probing the cause of a missile strike on an Iranian school that killed an estimated 120 children, people familiar with the matter said. Years before the U.S. attacked Iran at the end of February, an intelligence analyst examining information about potential future strike targets in Iran noticed changes at a site the U.S. had previously characterized as a naval facility belonging to the elite wing of the Iranian military in Minab city in the southeast of the country. It was, in fact, now an elementary school. The analyst remarked on changes at the site in a digital intelligence tool, but that tool wasn’t linked up to the official intelligence database that the U.S. uses to develop strike targets and the information was never conveyed to military commanders, according to people familiar with the matter who declined to be named discussing sensitive topics. On Feb. 28, when President Trump announced the start of major combat operations against Iran, a missile struck the school. The attack killed an estimated 120 children, and nearly 200 people in all, representing the...

How AI-driven warfare is exposing dangerous legal gaps in accountability, civilian protection, and modern conflict.

YouTube video by Victoria Whittam

Five former US officials, including a former top military lawyer, have criticised the Pentagon for not acknowledging potential American involvement in a deadly strike on an Iranian school earlier this year. Some of those officials said it was highly unusual not to release even basic details of the strike after such a length of time. A missile hit a primary school in Minab during the opening salvos of the US-Israeli war on February 28, killing 168 people including around 110 children according to Iranian officials. In the two months since then the Pentagon has said only that the incident is under investigation. US media reported in early March that US military investigators believed American forces were likely responsible for hitting the school unintentionally but had not reached a final conclusion. Asked a series of questions by the BBC about the strike and the accusations of a lack of transparency, a Pentagon official said "this incident is currently under investigation," adding that more details would be provided when they became available. The BBC has reviewed three historical cases in which civilians were killed during US military operations and in each case significantly more information had been released by the Pentagon within...

Georgene Smith Goodin’s work has appeared in numerous publications, and has won the Mash Stories flash fiction competition.

On the morning of Feb. 28, 2026, as the first wave of U.S.-Israeli airstrikes swept across southern Iran, a Tomahawk cruise missile struck the Shajarah Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab, Hormozgan Province. Three missiles struck the compound in rapid succession. At the time of impact, between 170 and 264 students were present — most of them girls between the ages of 7 and 12. At least 165 schoolchildren, teachers, and parents were killed. It appears to be the deadliest single incident involving civilian casualties so far in the conflict. A preliminary U.S. military inquiry has since concluded that American forces were likely responsible and that the strike resulted from a targeting error rooted in stale intelligence data. The Defense Intelligence Agency had labeled the school building as a legitimate military target — a classification derived from when the site was originally part of an adjacent Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) naval base. Satellite imagery later confirmed that the school had been physically separated from that base between 2013 and 2016: fenced off, repainted in bright colors, equipped with playgrounds, and converted entirely to civilian educational use. The strike has triggered condemnation from the United Nations, bipartisan concern in Congress,...

The U.S. military said on Friday it has elevated the investigation into a devastating February 28 strike on an Iranian girls’ school after media reports revealed the probe shows U.S. forces were likel...