UK foreign secretary: reports of Unrwa workers being killed by Israeli strike in Gaza are ‘appalling’
The UK’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, has described the reported deaths of six Unrwa workers in an Israeli strike on a UN-run school in Gaza as “appalling”.
In a message posted on social media, the recently installed foreign secretary said:
Reports of six Unrwa staff members being killed in an Israeli strike are appalling. My thoughts are with their families and all those who continue to carry out lifesaving work. Aid workers must be able to do their jobs safely. We need a ceasefire and hostage release deal now.
Since coming to power in July, the new UK Labour government has restarted British funding for the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, with Lammy stating in parliament in London that “Humanitarian aid is a moral necessity in the face of such a catastrophe [in Gaza]. Unrwa is absolutely central to these efforts. No other agency can get aid into Gaza at the scale needed.”
The UK and many other western nations suspended funding to Unrwa after Israel alleged that several members of its staff participated in the surprise 7 October Hamas attack inside southern Israel.
At the time UK funding was restored to Unrwa, Lammy said “I was appalled by the allegations that Unrwa staff were involved in the 7 October attacks. We are reassured that after Catherine Colonna’s independent review, Unrwa is ensuring they meet the highest standards of neutrality and strengthening its procedures, including on vetting.”
The Labour government has also imposed a limited export ban on some arms sales to Israel, a move which was described as “shameful” by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel’s military has claimed that the strike yesterday on the UN-run school, which was sheltering displaced Palestinians, was aimed at what the IDF described as “a Hamas command and control centre”. Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of using civilian buildings and infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. [See 9.34 BST]
Key events
Israeli government to revoke credentials of all Al Jazeera journalists working in the country
Israel’s government press office (GPO) has announced it is revoking the press cards of all Al Jazeera journalists working in Israel.
Nitzan Chen, the director of the GPO, said the network constitutes “a threat to IDF soldiers”.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s government had already banned the network from operating in Israel in May of this year.
There has been some attempt to get the school term started for children in Gaza, with some makeshift classes set up for children who have been displaced from their homes by Israel’s bombardment of the territory.
The Palestinian ministry of education has said more than 650,000 students in the Gaza Strip are being deprived of their right to education, and at least 84% of schools in the territory require full reconstruction or significant rebuilding.
The senior deputy director of Unrwa affairs in Gaza, Sam Rose, has told Al Jazeera that staff at the agency are “despairing” after yesterday’s airstrike by Israel which killed six of its workers.
The new network quoted Rose speaking from Khan Younis and saying:
Staff in the offices are in shock. The scale and the rapidity of the incidents are just too difficult for us to get our head around sometimes. We’re running out of options. The space in which we’re able to operate geographically, and even conceptually and existentially, is simply shrinking.
In a statement the charity Islamic Relief has said it is “appalled at Israel’s latest deadly attack on a school in central Gaza where Palestinian civilians, mainly women and children, were told to shelter.”
The statement continued:
More than 300 humanitarian workers have now been killed in Gaza over the past 11 months, as Israel’s relentless bombing has turned Gaza into the most dangerous place in the world to deliver aid. Most of the humanitarian workers killed are local Palestinians who are desperately trying to deliver vital aid while themselves being bombed, forced from their homes, and trying to feed their own children.
Israel’s military has claimed that it carried out a precise strike on a Hamas command and control centre located in the UN-run school, which has been strike by Israeli forces multiple times during the current conflict.
WHO: a quarter of Palestinians injured during Israel’s bombardment of Gaza have suffered life-changing injuries
In its press conference earlier, Reuters reports that the World Health Organization said at least one quarter, or about 22,500, of those Palestinians injured by Israel’s bombardment in the Gaza conflict had suffered life-changing injuries, such as missing limbs that would require rehabilitation services for years to come.
Here is our video report after an Israeli airstrike on a central Gaza school being used as a shelter for displaced Palestinians was reported to have killed 18 people, including six members of staff from Unrwa.
The IDF reports that about 15 projectiles were fired into Israeli-controlled from the direction of Lebanon in the last hour.
It reports there were no injuries, but emergency services are working to extinguish some fires started by falling debris or projectiles. The Kann news service is carrying a video clip which it says shows fires burning in western Galilee.
WHO says it carried out largest medical evacuation yet from Gaza during the war, taking nearly 100 people to the UAE
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday it had evacuated nearly 100 people – including dozens of children – from Gaza to the UAE.
Saying that there were over 10,000 Gazans awaiting medical evacuation after 11 months of Israeli bombardment of the territory, WHO said the transfer of nearly 100 people was “the largest evacuation yet from Gaza since October 2023.”
Reuters reports Richard Peeperkorn, WHO representative for the occupied Palestinian territory said “Gaza needs medical corridors. We need a better organised and sustained system.”
The evacuation of patients took place on Wednesday.
The organisation also said it was happy with progress in its emergency polio vaccination programme in the Gaza Strip, and is confident of reaching its 90% target. The first case of polio in Gaza for 25 years was recently discovered, prompting the vaccination effort.
There are unconfirmed reports in Israeli media that in the last few days Israeli special forces carried out a raid on the ground against a weapons facility inside Syria.
Channel 12 news, citing a security source, claimed it was an IDF operation against an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) facility that develops missiles and drones and which provided support to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
More details soon …
In the past hour warning sirens have sounded in a number of locations in northern Israel. Tens of thousands of people in Israel and Lebanon have been forced to evacuate their homes on either side of the UN-drawn blue line that separates Israel and Lebanon due to the repeated exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israeli forces.
Turkey will seek international arrest warrants over Israeli shooting of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi
Turkey has opened an investigation into the death of a Turkish-American activist shot and killed by Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank and will request international arrest warrants, Ankara said on Thursday.
Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old volunteer with the anti-occupation International Solidarity Movement, died in hospital on Friday after being shot in the head during a protest in Beita, near Nablus. Witnesses said she was shot at by Israeli soldiers positioned in a nearby field.
Reuters reports her body will arrive for burial in Turkey on Friday. It reports Turkey’s foreign ministry said she “was deliberately targeted and killed by Israeli soldiers during a peaceful demonstration in solidarity with Palestinians. We will make every effort to ensure that this crime does not go unpunished,” it said.
Israel has said it was highly likely its troops had fired the shot that killed her but claimed her death was unintentional. Turkey’s justice minister Yılmaz Tunç said the Ankara chief prosecutor’s office is investigating “those responsible for the martyrdom and murder of our sister”, and told reporters that Turkey had evidence regarding the killing and would make international arrest requests.
In the wake of Eygi’s death US secretary of state Antony Blinken called on Israel to “make some fundamental changes in the way that they operate in the West Bank, including changes to their rules of engagement. Now we have the second American citizen killed at the hands of Israeli security forces. It’s not acceptable.”
Eygi’s family have been critical of the way the US administration responded to her death, saying that several days after she was killed, neither the White House nor Joe Biden had called to offer condolences. A vigil in Eygi’s memory was held last night in Seattle, where she had lived.
UK foreign secretary: reports of Unrwa workers being killed by Israeli strike in Gaza are ‘appalling’
The UK’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, has described the reported deaths of six Unrwa workers in an Israeli strike on a UN-run school in Gaza as “appalling”.
In a message posted on social media, the recently installed foreign secretary said:
Reports of six Unrwa staff members being killed in an Israeli strike are appalling. My thoughts are with their families and all those who continue to carry out lifesaving work. Aid workers must be able to do their jobs safely. We need a ceasefire and hostage release deal now.
Since coming to power in July, the new UK Labour government has restarted British funding for the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, with Lammy stating in parliament in London that “Humanitarian aid is a moral necessity in the face of such a catastrophe [in Gaza]. Unrwa is absolutely central to these efforts. No other agency can get aid into Gaza at the scale needed.”
The UK and many other western nations suspended funding to Unrwa after Israel alleged that several members of its staff participated in the surprise 7 October Hamas attack inside southern Israel.
At the time UK funding was restored to Unrwa, Lammy said “I was appalled by the allegations that Unrwa staff were involved in the 7 October attacks. We are reassured that after Catherine Colonna’s independent review, Unrwa is ensuring they meet the highest standards of neutrality and strengthening its procedures, including on vetting.”
The Labour government has also imposed a limited export ban on some arms sales to Israel, a move which was described as “shameful” by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel’s military has claimed that the strike yesterday on the UN-run school, which was sheltering displaced Palestinians, was aimed at what the IDF described as “a Hamas command and control centre”. Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of using civilian buildings and infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. [See 9.34 BST]
The European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell Fontelles, is in Lebanon today. The Lebanese army have posted a picture of him meeting with army commander Gen Joseph Aoun, and said that, alongside the EU’s ambassador to Lebanon Sandra De Waele, they discussed the situation in the south of the country, where Hezbollah and Israel have been repeatedly exchanging fire for months.
Israel’s culture minister Miki Zohar has said that only military power will push Hamas to come to a deal to release hostages from Gaza, but conceded that “there is no doubt that military pressure endangers the hostages.”
The Times of Israel reports that in an interview with Haredi radio station Kol BaRama, the Likud party minister said that protests against Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and calls for elections in Israel were hardening the Hamas negotiating position.
It quotes him saying:
Attempts to reach a deal did not succeed because we are facing a terrorist organisation that is not rational and only understands military power. We really want a deal and hope there will be a deal. The price Israel will need to pay is heavy.
There is no doubt that military pressure endangers the hostages. It’s not that we think the hostages are in a good situation. Their lives are in constant danger, especially when there is fire close to where they are, or even where they are. And this is the complexity of this war.