GAZA (Palestine Foundation Information Center) The head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) , Philippe Lazzarini, has called today “another black day” for the UN in Gaza.
In a post on X, Lazzarini expressed condolences for the UN workers killed during Israel’s latest escalation.
“The UN, including UNRWA, continues to pay a heavy price while undertaking humanitarian duties,” he wrote. “Humanitarian workers must be protected at all times.”
For its part, the Hamas Movement has issued a new statement about the Israeli targeting of a headquarters used by foreign workers at United Nations institutions that resulted in the death of an employee and the wounding of five others.
“This crime not only constitutes a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, but also comes in the context of the occupation’s systematic policy of targeting civilians and humanitarian and relief workers, with the aim of terrorizing them and discouraging them from performing their humanitarian duty towards our people, and deepening the humanitarian catastrophe that the Gaza Strip is experiencing,” the Movement said.
It added that since the start of the war, Israel has killed “hundreds of UNRWA staff and workers in international humanitarian and relief institutions, as part of its criminal war, through which it seeks to tighten the blockade and strangle the Gaza Strip and deprive our people of the most basic necessities of life, in blatant defiance of international laws and norms”.
