JABALIYA, Gaza Strip ? An examination of an Israeli barrage that put a line of at least 10 shells through a United Nations school sheltering displaced Palestinians here last week suggests that Israeli troops paid little heed to warnings to safeguard such sites and may have unleashed weapons inappropriate for urban areas despite rising alarm over civilian deaths.

Inspection of the damage, a preliminary United Nations review that collected 30 pieces of shrapnel, and interviews with two dozen witnesses indicate that the predawn strikes on Wednesday, July 30, that killed 21 people at the school, in the crowded Jabaliya refugee camp, were likely to have come from heavy artillery not designed for precision use.

Israeli officials have argued throughout their 27-day air-and-ground campaign against Hamas, the militant group that dominates Gaza, that it is the enemy?s insistence on operating near shelters and other humanitarian sites that endangers civilians. But in the Jabaliya case, they provided no evidence of such activity and no explanation for the strike beyond saying that Palestinian militants were firing about 200 yards away.

?It was clear that they were not aiming at a specific house, but fired lots and it fell where it fell,? said Abdel-Latif al-Seifi, whose three-story villa just beyond the school?s north wall ended up with two large holes in its roof.

The Jabaliya strike has already opened Israel to a new level of global scrutiny. International criticism ratcheted up another notch on Sunday after a missile the Israelis say was meant for three militants on a motorcycle also killed people waiting in line for food outside a United Nations school in Rafah that had been turned into a shelter.

Though Israeli military leaders have declared definitively that no United Nations facility was targeted, Rafah was the sixth shelter struck during the operation. Such strikes have renewed sharp questions about the tactics Israel uses in dense neighborhoods and, especially, near shelters that are supposed to provide refuge to people who follow Israel?s own orders to leave areas of fierce fighting.

?Why aren?t the safe zones working?? asked Robert Turner, the Gaza director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which is sheltering nearly 260,000 people in 90 schools and emails the Israeli authorities with their exact locations twice a day. ?Why are the military decisions being made that are leading to these tragedies??

The Israeli general who heads a committee charged with investigating the civilian impact of ground operations said that he did not know the details of what happened in Jabaliya because the troops involved were still fighting and therefore had not been interviewed. Speaking on the condition of anonymity under military protocol, the general said in an interview that ?Hamas people were shooting at? a group of soldiers working to destroy a tunnel in the area. No Israelis were killed or wounded.

The New York Times emailed Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, a map of where the strikes hit and asked him to point out where Israeli forces were operating, and from where in the 200-yard radius around the school they saw enemy fire; he did not respond. Colonel Lerner and the general refused to say what ordnance was deployed.
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Asked whether artillery would be appropriate in such a situation, the general said ?the question is whether or not they were under great or imminent risk.?

?The sheer orders are you are not allowed to fire artillery or mortar shells into urban areas unless there are imminent risks for human lives ? meaning only if you are under deadly fire or under great risk,? he said. ?The orders are clear. But I find it very difficult to judge those fighters under fire and tell them, ?Look, please open your textbook and read out loud what we told you.? ?

And morons support Israel, why?