Israel’s war on Gaza: Death toll nears 33,000
A total of 32,975 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip since last October, the Health Ministry in the besieged enclave said on Wednesday.
The Gaza-based Health Ministry made the statement as the Israeli deadly onslaught on Gaza entered its 180th day. The ongoing onslaughts have also injured 75,577 Palestinians, it added.
It noted that in the past 24 hours, ‘Israel committed five massacres against families across the Gaza Strip that left 59 martyrs and 83 others injured’.
“Many people are still trapped under rubble and on the roads and rescuers are unable to reach them,” it added.
Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by Hamas, which killed nearly 1,200 people. The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while
60% of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the ICJ, which in January issued an interim ruling that ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guar
antee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.
UNRWA lost 176 staff
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) on Wednesday said it lost 176 of its staff
since the beginning of the Israeli onslaught against Gaza on October 7. The agency said in a statement on its X account: “176 UNRWA staff were tragically killed since the beginning of the war in Gaza.”
It added that workers are not a target and must be protected at all times’.
Israel ‘continues to deny UNRWA access to the north with food assistance and other basic supplies’, the agency noted.
On Tuesday, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric at a news conference said that ‘at least 196 humanitarian workers have been killed since October’ in the Gaza Strip. He described the Palestinian territory as ‘one of the world’s most dangerous and difficult places to work’ for humanitarian aid workers.
The UNRWA is the largest humanitarian organisation in Gaza, and is considered as the backbone of the humanitarian aid operations in Gaza. Following the Israeli accusation that some of the UN agency members were involved in the October 7, 2023 attacks, at least 17 countries, including the US, UK, Australia, and many EU countries, have halted payments to UNRWA.