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Airstrike kills U.N. worker and his family

KHAN YUNIS, GAZA - DECEMBER 22: People mourn as they collect the bodies of Palestinians killed in an airstrike on December 22, 2023, in Khan Younis, Gaza. The United Kingdom, France and Germany are the latest countries to call on Israel to reach a "sustainable truce" after more than two months of war in Gaza, which was sparked by the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas that left 1,200 dead and around 240 taken hostage. In Israel's retaliatory air and ground offensive, nearly 20,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza health officials. The Israeli prime minister has resisted calls for a ceasefire, saying last week that "military pressure is necessary both for the return of the hostages and for victory." (Photo by Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images)  (Ahmad Hasaballah)
By Gaya Gupta New York Times

A United Nations aid worker and his family were killed Friday near Gaza City, the same day that aid agencies sharply criticized the U.N. Security Council for passing a resolution that did not call for a full cease-fire in the besieged enclave.

An Israeli airstrike killed Issam al-Mughrabi, who had worked at the U.N. Development Program for 30 years, his wife and his five children, Achim Steiner, an administrator at the agency, said in a statement.

“The loss of Issam and his family has deeply affected us all,” he said. “The U.N. and civilians in Gaza are not a target.”

Steiner said members of his extended family may have been killed also, but that could not be confirmed.

The Israeli military did not comment on the report.

The strike that killed al-Mughrabi underscored the scope of Israel’s continuing bombardment of Gaza’s densely populated areas with heavy munitions, which U.N. officials have said is not only taking lives but making it nearly impossible to distribute aid.

The bombardment is killing civilians at a devastating pace, with the Gaza Health Ministry reporting about 20,000 people killed — a majority of them women and children — in the past 77 days of fighting. Bombings can often claim almost all of an extended family. Areas designated as safe for civilians have been routinely assailed by 2,000-pound bombs.

U.N. workers, too, have been killed in large numbers. At least 136 workers from UNRWA — the agency that cares for Palestinian refugees and employs around 13,000 people in Gaza — have been killed in the conflict. It’s the highest death toll recorded in the history of the United Nations.

On Saturday morning, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported that about 200 people had been killed and another 368 injured by Israeli military operations since Friday.

Senior U.N. officials and many aid agencies have argued that a full cease-fire is needed to allow the distribution of aid to nearly 1.9 million displaced Palestinians, many of whom face spreading disease, hunger and an overwhelmed health care system.

“The way Israel is conducting its offensive is creating massive obstacles to the distribution of humanitarian aid inside Gaza,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a post on social media Friday.

The United States, standing with Israel, has opposed resolutions in the U.N. Security Council that called for a cease-fire, arguing they would allow Hamas, the armed group that controls Gaza, to regroup and launch future attacks, like the massacres on Oct. 7 in Israel that sparked the current war.

In the end, the resolution that passed Friday, with the United States abstaining, called for “urgent extended humanitarian pauses and corridors” to allow for rescue and recovery efforts to safely proceed in Gaza, but it did not call for a full cease-fire, as many diplomats and agencies had hoped.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.