Jordan condemns Israeli attack on UN shelter in Gaza's Khan Younis

By Laith Al Junaidi

AMMAN, Jordan, (AA) – Jordan on Wednesday evening strongly decried the Israeli attack on a UN center sheltering displaced people in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, calling for an end to the Israeli aggression in the Palestinian enclave.

“Israel's continued violations of international law is the result of the absence of an effective international stance to end this raging war in the Gaza Strip,” the Jordanian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The statement described the attack as an "act that contradicts all human and ethical values, and violates the international law, especially the 1949 Geneva Convention.”

It also called on the UN Security Council to urgently stop "Israel's blatant challenge to international law calling for a cease-fire.”

The head of the United Nations Relief Works Agency in Gaza (UNRWA), Thomas White, wrote on X Wednesday that “an attack on the Khan Younis Training Centre took place Wednesday, during which two tank rounds hit a building that shelters 800 people.”

Nine people were killed and 75 injured in the attack, according to White.

Israel has launched a deadly offensive on the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7 Hamas attack, killing at least 25,700 Palestinians and injuring 63,740 others. Nearly 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the Hamas attack.

The Israeli war has left 85% of Gaza’s population internally displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while more than half of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

*Writing by Mohammad Sio