The U.N. worker and more than seventy of his relatives were killed in the airstrike
The Hamas in Gaza: How do civilians live in a war-torn Gaza? A comment on a Palestine refugee’s lawyer
Frank reported from Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Scott Neuman reported from Tel Aviv. Anas Baba lived in the Gaza Strip.
International aid groups have been warning for weeks of a growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The U.N. World Food Program warned that “Gazans are becoming more desperate by the day, with nowhere to go and nothing to eat.”
He said that they see casualties contributing to their cause because they don’t care about their populations. “Because that’s OK if they can mobilize the media [and] public opinion.”
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Israel’s devastating air-and-ground assault on Gaza has now killed more than 20,000 people in the 10 weeks since the conflict began, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health — a figure that is fast approaching 1% of the Palestinian territory’s pre-war population.
People who have followed past wars in Gaza say the Gaza Ministry of Health’s numbers are reliable. The names and ages of the dead are usually gathered from hospitals and morgues by the ministry.
The health ministry states that the majority of those killed have been women and children. The ministry of the Hamas in Gaza says that over 50,000 people have been wounded. International aid groups generally agree with its tallies.
But a retired Israeli brigadier general, Shlomo Brom, said it is difficult for troops to avoid civilian casualties when Hamas is embedded in mosques, schools and hospitals, as the Israelis claim.
Israeli airstrike killed a U.N. aid worker and his extended family in the besieged enclave of Gaza
Es-Sanki wears a black baseball cap and a salt-and-pepper beard and says that the body of his son who was killed was buried under the rubble.
In the early morning hours of Dec. 9, he says, his wife, four daughters and two of his sons were killed by Israeli airstrikes that flattened their four-story Gaza City apartment building. A third son only survived because he stayed with an aunt the night of the attack.
The strike that killed Mr. Al Mughrabi underscored the scope of Israel’s continuing bombardment of Gaza’s densely populated areas with heavy munitions, which U.N. officials have said is not only taking lives but making it nearly impossible to distribute aid.
As the death toll continues to rise, Israel faces growing international pressure to end the bombing of Gaza. Even the Biden administration, which has firmly backed Israel’s stated goal of crushing Hamas, has repeatedly admonished Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to minimize civilian casualties.
Around one out of every 105 people has been killed in the war in the enclave, where there is an estimated 2.1 million people.
The resolution passed on Friday, with the United States abstaining, called for extended humanitarian pauses to allow for rescue and recovery efforts to proceed, but it did not call for a full cease-fire.
The UN’s Secretary General said in a Friday post that Israel’s offensive is making it harder to get humanitarian aid to Gaza.
The distribution of aid to nearly 1.9 million Palestinians who were displaced by the war is in urgent need of a cease-fire, according to U.N. officials and aid agencies.
A U.N. aid worker and more than 70 members of his extended family were killed on Friday near Gaza City, the same day that aid agencies sharply criticized the U.N. Security Council for passing a resolution that did not call for a full cease-fire in the besieged enclave.
An Israeli airstrike killed Issam Al Mughrabi, who had worked at the U.N. Development Program for 30 years, and his wife, his five children, and more than 70 members of his extended family, Achim Steiner, an administrator at the agency, said in a statement.
A UN aid worker and more than 70 members of his extended family were killed on Friday near Gaza City, the same day that aid agencies criticised UN Security Council for passing a resolution not calling for a full cease-fire in the besieged enclave. The strike killed Issam Al Mughrabi, who had worked at the UN Development Programme for 30 years.