The UN said on Monday that more UN staff had been killed in the Gaza Strip than in any other conflict in the organisation’s 78-year history, CNN reports.
Since Israel’s war with Hamas began more than a month ago, 102 employees of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) have been killed and 27 others injured in the Gaza Strip. The agency said in a statement:
In the last 24 hours, one UNRWA staff member was killed with her family in the north of the Gaza Strip due to strikes. This is the highest number of United Nations aid workers killed in a conflict in the history of the United Nations.
On Monday, UN offices around the world lowered flags to half-mast and UN staff observed a minute’s silence in memory of their colleagues killed in Gaza. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who led the minute of silence from UN headquarters in New York, said:
They will never be forgotten.
UNRWA said those killed were among 13,000 of its staff working in Gaza and many had died alongside their families during Israel’s constant bombardment and blockade of the Palestinian territory following the October 7 attack by Hamas militants. The statement said:
They were teachers, school principals, health workers, including a gynecologist, engineers, support staff and a psychologist.
UN aid workers are among at least 11,180 people killed in Israeli airstrikes, including 4,609 children, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
A sharp escalation in tensions between Israel and Palestine erupted after Hamas attacks on 7 October, when militants killed at least 1,200 people in Israel and took more than 200 hostages. Israel says it is fighting to eliminate Hamas, which it believes has infiltrated Gaza’s civilian infrastructure.
UNRWA is the main UN agency operating in Gaza, sheltering an estimated 780,000 people in more than 150 overcrowded facilities, even though essential services have been destroyed. The agency was established a year after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and provides services such as education, health, relief and social services. After the Holocaust and other horrors of World War II, the United Nations was established in 1945 to prevent similar atrocities and future world wars.
The UN high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, said on Wednesday that both Hamas and Israel had committed war crimes over the past month.
Gaza, home to more than 2 million people in an area of 140 square miles (362 square kilometres), has long been one of the world’s poorest places, cut off from the outside world for the past 17 years by an Israeli and Egyptian blockade. Israel’s total siege and constant airstrikes have led to a deepening humanitarian crisis and desperate conditions inside Gaza, including a near total shutdown of the health system and widespread destruction of entire neighbourhoods.
The agency said its staff were working “around the clock” with scarce supplies to support displaced people in its schools and buildings, facilitating small shipments of aid into Gaza and helping vulnerable Gazans, including pregnant women and babies.
According to Thomas White, UNRWA’s director of affairs in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli blockade, which prohibits the entry of all fuel and most food, water and medicine into Gaza, has left UNRWA’s aid operations “strangled in resources” and the lack of fuel will force the agency to halt services completely, including desalination plants and waste disposal. UNRWA has no fuel to refuel its trucks in Gaza and the organisation will be unable to receive aid shipments through the Rafah crossing on Tuesday.
Earlier this month, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philip Lazzarini said his staff in Gaza were “living in the same living conditions as everyone else”. He said:
They’re struggling on a daily basis to find the bread, to find the water, to protect their children. And despite that, and despite the heavy loss within this organization, they remain committed to do whatever is possible to provide support to the people in Gaza. But it’s a constant daily struggle.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 42 media workers have been killed as of Monday since the war began. Despite protection under international law, humanitarian organisations, NGOs, journalists and medics have also been victims of flight.
More than 60 UNRWA facilities – mostly schools housing thousands of civilians – have been hit by Israeli collateral or direct strikes, and 66 occupants have been killed since 7 October. On Sunday, one of the agency’s facilities in Rafah in southern Gaza was hit by the Israeli navy and sustained significant damage. Lazzarini noted:
This recent attack is yet another indication that nowhere in Gaza is safe. Not the north, not the middle areas and not the south. The disregard for the protection of civilian infrastructure including UN facilities, hospitals, schools, shelters and places of worship is testament to the level of horror that civilians in Gaza are living every day.
The Israeli military said on Sunday it “struck, based on operational requirements, near the UN building”.
UNRWA said that of the total number of damaged sites, 70 per cent were south of Wadi Gaza, in the middle and southern areas, including Rafah and Khan Younis. It is to this area of Gaza that the Israeli military has ordered civilians in northern Gaza and Gaza City to relocate.
