A/HRC/28/78 end of Israeli military operations. Other apartment towers flattened by Israeli strikes included the 12-storey al-Zafer tower 4, the Italian tower and the al-Basha tower. Countless reports of schools, mosques and hospitals allegedly targeted during the military operations were also received. An international non-governmental organisation reported that 25 ambulances of the Palestinian Red Crescent were also hit, including 12 that were either destroyed or rendered inoperable. 13. Prominent human rights defenders based in Gaza observed, “never in our lives have we seen that level of destruction”, referring to certain neighbourhoods and towns that were particularly hard hit, such as Shuja’iya, Khuza’a and Rafah. Even experienced humanitarian workers, exposed to some of the worst conflict zones across the world, informed the Special Rapporteur that what they saw in Gaza was “shocking, by all accounts”. Three months after the ceasefire, the impact of Israeli strikes on the water and sanitation facilities in Gaza were still being felt, with 20 to 30 per cent of households, or 450,000 people, still without access to municipal water because of the damage caused.9 14. UNRWA schools serving as emergency shelters for internally displaced persons, the exact position of which had been notified to the Israeli Defense Forces, were allegedly targeted by shells or other munitions on at least seven separate occasions, resulting in at least 42 deaths, including 11 UNRWA staff members. In one incident involving a UNRWA school in Jabaliya, on 30 July, Israeli shelling allegedly killed 16 people and injured another 100. According to UNRWA, it had already informed the Israeli military authorities of the location of the school 17 times, including once only a few hours prior to the attack. The Special Rapporteur notes that the Secretary-General established, in November 2014, a board of inquiry to review and investigate a number of specific incidents in which death or injuries occurred at and/or damage was done to United Nations premises. The Special Rapporteur is also aware that Israel has established its own fact-finding assessment mechanism and has opened a number of criminal investigations into certain selected cases of alleged violations of international law. It remains to be seen if this can bring any measure of meaningful accountability to Palestinian victims in the light of the criticism levelled by observers to date.10 C. Mass displacement 15. At the height of the escalation of hostilities, an estimated 500,000 people were internally displaced across Gaza, many of them forced to take shelter in UNRWA schools, 11 government-run schools or with extended family or friends.12 Many of the school buildings were not designed to serve as shelters, and the sheer number of internally displaced persons seeking shelter reportedly resulted in severe overcrowding and put a considerable strain on sanitation facilities. According to a humanitarian aid worker who visited the schools, the general overcrowding of schools with limited capacity had led to a lack of privacy for families and inadequate hygiene and sanitation conditions that brought about various stress9 10 11 12 6 Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance, ‘Gaza Strip: Humanitarian Dashboard’, November 2014 See Decisions of the Israel Defense Forces Military Advocate General regarding Exceptional Incidents that Occurred during Operation 'Protective Edge' – Update No. 2, 7 Decmber 2014, and “Israel’s Gaza probe raises questions”, Al Jazeera, 8 December 2014. As at October 2014, 18 UNRWA school buildings still served as collective centres for approximately 38,346 internally displaced persons, an estimated 60 per cent of whom are children. As at November 2014, an estimated 100,000 people were still internally displaced in Gaza and in need of immediate assistance. See Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance, ‘Gaza Strip: Humanitarian Dashboard’, November 2014