At least 12 UN aid workers were killed in Israeli bombings in Gaza, a United Nations spokesperson told Business Insider on Thursday, demonstrating the risks faced by non-combatants on Palestinian territory.
“Many of them were killed when they were with their families,” Juliette Touma, director of communications for the United Nations Palestine Refugee Agency in the Middle East, said in an interview.
Among the fatalities, all of them Palestinians, were five teachers, a gynecologist, a psychologist and support staff.
“I want people to know that there are civilians – even civilians – who are being killed in Gaza,” Touma warned.
The Israeli army warned this Friday that it will operate with a “significant force” in Gaza in the coming days and called on the population of the north of the territory to withdraw to the south to attack Hamas.
Israel has concentrated forces near the Gaza Strip in a sign of a possible ground offensive, after bombing territory controlled by the Islamist group Hamas in recent days.
The escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was provoked by Hamas, which on Saturday carried out an unprecedented incursion into Israel, killing civilians and soldiers and taking more than a hundred hostages, taken to the Gaza Strip.
Since then, the conflict has caused more than 1,300 deaths on the Israeli side and around 1,400 on the Palestinian side.
Israeli bombings also left more than 423,000 people displaced in the Gaza Strip.
Source: TSF
