A group of 22 human rights experts have denounced Israel’s deadly assault on a UNRWA-run school-turned-shelter in the Gaza Strip on May 7, as well as its forcible closure of all six schools run by the agency in occupied East Jerusalem on May 8.

“Attacks on schools are an assault on children,” Al Jazeera quoted the experts as saying.

They are “also an assault on the right to safe education and a blatant violation of international law, all the more in the context of an unlawful occupation”, the experts added.

The attack on the UNRWA-run school in Gaza involved two strikes on a building that was sheltering 2,000 displaced Palestinians. At least 30 civilians, including women and children, were killed.

In the attacks on occupied East Jerusalem, heavily armed Israeli forces stormed three UNRWA schools in the Shu’fat refugee camp while classes were in session, violently evicting more than 550 Palestinian children, some as young as six, from their classrooms, the experts said.

“By the end of the day, all six UNRWA schools in East Jerusalem had been evacuated,” they said.