92 UN staff killed in Gaza war, says chief commissioner of UN agency for Palestinian refugees

By Timo Kirez

GENEVA (AA) – Some 92 UN staff have now been killed in the Gaza Strip amid the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict, said the chief commissioner of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees on Thursday.

In an interview with local Swiss media, Philippe Lazzarini, the Swiss commissioner-general of the UN Palestinian Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said around 13,000 UN staff are employed in the Gaza Strip and that the organization has never had "so many deaths in such a short period of time."

More than 700,000 people have now fled to the schools set up by UNRWA "to be safe under the blue UN flag," he said. However, more than 50 of the facilities have now been hit, killing dozens and injuring hundreds, Lazzarini added.

Escaping to the south of the Gaza Strip is also not proving to be safe, the senior UN official said. A third of the UN staff had died there, according to Lazzarini, because they were also being bombed.

The longer the dying continues as announced by Israel, the further we will move away from any prospect of peace in the future, according to the chief commissioner.

Lazzarini said in the interview that he was deeply shocked by what he found in Gaza.

"The situation is heartbreaking," he lamented. Lazzarini said the people lack everything, they had fled to the UNRWA schools and were asking for bread and water.

There is also a lack of fuel, he continued. If no fuel reaches Gaza in the next few days, "key facilities will no longer function," he added.

The blockade of aid supplies means that there is hardly any trade and public order is in danger of collapsing, according to the UN official. If nothing changes soon, people will die because of a lack of humanitarian aid and not because of the bombing, he said.

"Such a strict blockade is nothing more than collective punishment," Lazzarini added.