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UN chief says lack of accountability on staff killings in Gaza ‘unacceptable’
A lack of accountability for the killing of United Nations staff and humanitarian aid workers in the Gaza Strip is “totally unacceptable,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says.
Describing Israel’s war in Gaza, Guterres said there have been “very dramatic violations of the international humanitarian law and the total absence of an effective protection of civilians”.
“What’s happening in Gaza is totally unacceptable,” he said.
Nearly 300 humanitarian aid workers, more than two-thirds of them UN staff, have also been killed during the conflict, according to the UN. Guterres said there should be an effective investigation and accountability for their deaths.
“We have courts but we see that the decisions of courts are not respected, and it is this kind of limbo of accountability that is totally unacceptable and that requires also a serious a serious reflection.”
UN official promises staff in Gaza ‘not going to back down’ after 6 killed in Israeli strike
William Deere, an UNRWA official based in Washington, DC, says Israel’s war on Gaza “has absolutely no bottom to it” after six UN workers were among 18 killed at a shelter for war-displaced Palestinians.
“Six colleagues lost today, that brings the death toll among UNRWA staff in this conflict to 220, which is the highest ever in United Nations history,” Deere told Al Jazeera. “Our staff are on the front lines, and they’re not going to back down, they’re not going to stop doing their job.”
He said a total of 190 UN-run facilities have been targeted by Israeli forces “many of them more than once”, despite the sharing of their GPS coordinates with the Israeli military. Deere also noted a UN convoy going to vaccinate Palestinian children against polio on Monday was stopped for eight hours by Israeli troops with vehicles damaged by bulldozers.
“The longer the impunity prevails over these incidents at displaced shelters, the more international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions become irrelevant,” he added.
