"Addressing a conference of states pledging voluntary donations to UNRWA, the agency's deputy commissioner-general Margot Ellis, a former official with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), claimed that "This summer, around 2,200 people were killed in 50 days; over 500 were children, most under age twelve. 46 of those killed were in our shelters at the time."
As well as failing to distinguish civilians from terrorists, Ellis omitted to mention that many UNRWA facilities, including schools, were used as weapons storage depots by Hamas.
The number cited by Ellis contradicts the assessment of the UN's own Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which concluded that the "Palestinian fatality toll is 2,131, of whom 1,473 have been identified as civilians."
Center, an Israeli strategic think-tank, estimates that as many as 52 percent of fatalities were terrorists. The Centers' figures are based on fatality lists collated by OCHA.
Nor do the UNRWA figures account for Palestinians killed by Hamas rockets aimed at Israel that landed in Gaza, either because of operational incompetence or a deliberate attempt by Hamas to increase the number of casualties. At the end of July, for example, dozens of Palestinians were killed and wounded at the Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza, after a Hamas Fajr-5 rocket aimed at central Israel was fired from a playground outside the hospital and exploded on the site."