In the attacks of the Israeli army on the Gaza Strip, 99 employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East (UNRVA) have been killed so far, according to the spokesman of the Secretary General of the United Nations, Stefan Dijarik, as reported by CNN.
The new data on the number of dead UN personnel was published a few hours after the head of UNRWA, Philip Lazzarini, mourned the dozens of his employees who were killed in Gaza.
"We will never be the same without them." I once again call for a ceasefire for the sake of humanity," Lazzarini appealed.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, who visited the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing with Gaza, also spoke out, and said that both Hamas and Israel committed war crimes.
"The atrocities committed by Palestinian armed groups on October 7 were heinous. Those killings of civilians were war crimes, as was the continued holding of hostages," Turk said, adding that "the collective punishment of Palestinian civilians by Israel is also a war crime, as well as the illegal forced evacuation of civilians."
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres previously called the Gaza Strip the "Children's Graveyard", as it is assumed that among the more than 10.000 Palestinians killed in Israeli military actions, slightly less than half were children.
Guterres condemned Hamas for using people as human shields, but also warned that looking at the number of civilian casualties indicates that "something is wrong" in the operations of the Israeli military forces.
On October 7, Hamas terrorists invaded the territory of Israel from Gaza, killed 1400 and kidnapped 240 Israelis. The brutality of these crimes, many of which were caught on camera by the killers, shocked the world. After a month of the Israeli bombing of Gaza, the world's perception of victims and criminals is changing. There are more and more loud condemnations of Israel for the "excessive" use of military force, there is talk of "collective punishment of the Palestinians".
Israel rejects all these accusations.
JH/FoNet
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