Local and medical sources announced that the death toll since dawn today has risen to 16, including 12 martyrs in the central Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian News Agency (WAFA) reported that a martyr and an injured person arrived at Nasser Medical Complex, as a result of an Israeli bombardment that targeted a house in the center of Bani Suhaila town, east of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip.
Eyewitnesses also said that the body of a disabled person was recovered following an Israeli bombardment of the Al-Zeitoun neighborhood in southern Gaza City.
humanitarian disaster
In the same context, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in a statement on Tuesday that "the aid needed for survival has been blocked for nine weeks, and concerted international efforts are essential to prevent this humanitarian catastrophe from reaching unprecedented levels."
Turk noted that Israel has been preventing the entry of food, fuel, and other life-saving aid into Gaza since March 2, stressing that "starving civilians as a method of warfare and using any form of collective punishment constitutes a war crime."
In turn, the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said in a post on the X platform yesterday, Tuesday, that "since the outbreak of the war (the Israeli genocide in Gaza) in October 2023, more than 50 UNRWA employees, including teachers, doctors, and social workers, have been subjected to arrest and ill-treatment."
Lazzarini stated that he heard the testimony of an agency employee who was arrested and tortured while in Israeli custody before being recently released. He quoted words from that testimony: "I wished for death to end the nightmare I was living."
He explained that the agency's employees "were treated in the most horrific and inhumane ways, were used as human shields, and were subjected to beatings."
Lazzarini said that UN agency staff were "subjected to sleep deprivation, humiliation, threats of harm to themselves and their families," as well as "attacks with dogs and forced confessions."
He described what happened to the agency's staff as "horrific and shameful," stressing that "humanitarian workers are not a target, and their suffering must not be ignored."
Lazzarini stressed the "need to achieve justice and accountability for the crimes and violations of international law committed in the Gaza Strip."
Palestinians' need for UNRWA, the largest international humanitarian organization, has grown exponentially under the weight of the genocide perpetrated by Israel, with US support, in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023. This has left more than 170,000 Palestinians dead and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 11,000 missing.
