The United Nations announced on Friday that the Israeli army has killed more than 400 people who sought refuge in its facilities in the besieged Gaza Strip since 7 October.
This came in a statement by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) posted on its X account. The tweet read,
“One million people are sheltering in or around @UNRWA facilities across the📍#GazaStrip – from newborn babies to the elderly, this has become ‘home’. “Devastatingly, now over 400 people have been killed while seeking shelter in these @UN facilities. Nowhere, & no-one, is safe.”
In a previous post, UNRWA stated: “153 different @UNRWA installations have been attacked during the war in #Gaza.”
One million people are sheltering in or around @UNRWA facilities across the📍#GazaStrip – from newborn babies to the elderly, this has become "home".
Devastatingly, now over 400 people have been killed while seeking shelter in these @UN facilities.
Nowhere, & no-one, is safe. pic.twitter.com/BLcv00WcvI
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) February 23, 2024
Without providing any proof, Israel has repeatedly equated UNRWA staff with Hamas members in an effort to discredit the organization.
Israel continues to lobby to have UNRWA closed as it is the only UN agency with a specific mandate to look after the basic needs of Palestinian refugees.
If the agency no longer exists, argues Israel, then the refugee issue must no longer exist, and the legitimate right for Palestinian refugees to return to their land will be unnecessary.
Israel has denied that right of return since the late 1940s, even though its own membership in the UN was made conditional upon Palestinian refugees being allowed to return to their homes and land.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 29,606 Palestinians have been killed, and 69,737 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
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Moreover, at least 7,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7.
(MEMO, PC)
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