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SvennoJ on 19 August 2024
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Red Crescent says volunteer doctor ‘forcibly disappeared’ for 230 days

The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has urged Israel to immediately release its volunteer doctor Suliman Abu Shari’a and three of his colleagues.

“Our colleague … has been forcibly disappeared for 230 days after being arrested by Israeli occupation forces during their raid on the PRCS EMS center in Jabalia, northern Gaza,” the PRCS said in a post on X.

“To this day, his fate remains unknown,” the PRCS added, noting with “deep concern” the “testimonies from released colleagues about mistreatment and abuse”.


UN decries ‘normalisation of violence against aid workers’

The UN’s acting humanitarian chief has expressed concern over the increasing “normalisation of violence against aid workers” in a statement released on World Humanitarian Day.

Joyce Msuya, the acting director of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), added that the “lack of accountability” for aid worker deaths is “unacceptable, unconscionable and enormously harmful for aid operations everywhere”.

More than 280 aid workers have been killed in Gaza since October, including many local employees of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, OCHA said.

More than half of the deaths in 2023, or 163, were aid workers killed in Gaza during the first three months of the war, mainly in Israeli air strikes, OCHA added.


207 UNRWA members killed in Gaza so far

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees says 207 of its team members have been killed in Gaza during the war.

In a post on X, UNRWA marked World Humanitarian Day by paying tribute to those killed in the Strip since October 7.


‘Fear haunts us in every step’: Female aid workers in Gaza

On World Humanitarian Day, female aid workers in Gaza continue to face “extreme danger” amid relentless Israeli attacks, says aid organisation ActionAid UK, which works with a host of partner groups in the enclave.

Buthaina, director of the Wefaq Association for Women and Child Care, said female aid workers leave their homes each day not knowing whether they will ever return to their families.

“I will not hide from you that most humanitarian workers, including myself, suffer from anxiety. We can’t sleep; we can’t have sound, uninterrupted sleep. Our sleep is intermittent as a result of the fear we all feel living in the Gaza Strip. Fear haunts us in every step we take to provide humanitarian aid.”

Tasneem, 23, who works with the Palestinian NGOs Network (PNGO) and graduated from university just two months before October 7, said supporting others helped her cope with the horrors.

“This motivates and inspires me to go and to persist, to keep going and to insist on delivering what I can do for my people with the available resources I have in my hand… Helping my people is a therapy that helps me to heal."



‘Status quo is shameful’: Hundreds of humanitarian organisations call for protections

As Israel’s war on Gaza and other conflicts continue to claim lives, 413 humanitarian organisations have written to the UN General Assembly to call for protecting civilians and aid workers.

“The brutal hostilities we are seeing in multiple conflicts around the world have exposed a terrible truth: We are living in an era of impunity,” they write in the letter published by Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), the highest-level humanitarian coordination platform of the UN System.

“This status quo is shameful and cannot continue,” they wrote, adding that fatalities among humanitarian workers doubled in 2023 compared with the previous year, and that the 2024 fatalities are already “staggering”.


21 Red Crescent workers killed in West Bank, Gaza since October 7

The Palestine Red Crescent Society has said that “21 PRCS members have tragically lost their lives while on duty in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip” since Israel’s war on Gaza erupted on October 7 last year.

In a post on X marking World Humanitarian Day, the organisation said: “We must act for humanity, to safeguard those who risk everything to protect others.”


Israeli attacks have killed 82 civil worker deaths in Gaza

The Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza says countries are unable to to help and protect humanitarian workers in the Gaza Strip.

“Today the world celebrates the sanctity of humanitarian work, while international humanitarian organisations remain silent in the face of the Israeli occupation’s violations of international humanitarian law,” it said in a statement.

According to the organisation, 82 civil defence workers have been killed in Gaza since October 7 and 270 wounded by Israeli attacks while more than 75 percent of civil protection centres are destroyed.

It added that Israeli forces have killed 885 medical personnel in the enclave and stopped operations in 34 hospitals and health facilities.


The Palestinian Civil Defence crew work to retrieve bodies in the rubble of a home in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, August 18