United Nations, April 4 (RHC)-- The United Nations secretary-general has sharply condemned a recent Israeli attack that killed seven aid workers in the central part of the Gaza Strip, which is enduring a genocidal Israeli war.

“This is unconscionable — but it is an inevitable result of the way the war is being conducted,” Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday.

The victims belonged to the World Central Kitchen (WCK), which is responsible for distributing food aid among the Palestinian people in Gaza. They perished during the attack that had targeted the city of Deir al-Balah in the coastal sliver earlier in the day.

Among the dead were Australian, British, Palestinian, Polish, and US-Canadian employees.

According to Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, the Israeli military deliberately killed the aid workers.

“Knowing how Israel operates, my assessment is that Israeli forces intentionally killed WCK aid workers so that donors would pull out and civilians in Gaza could continue to be starved quietly,” Albanese wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

The incident brings “the number of aid workers killed in this conflict to 196 — including more than 175 members of our own UN staff,” Guterres said.  “It demonstrates yet again the urgent need for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, the unconditional release of all hostages, and the expansion of humanitarian aid into Gaza — as the Security Council demanded in its resolution.”

The UN Security Council passed the resolution last week, calling for a ceasefire in the war that the Israeli regime began on October 7 after Gaza’s resistance groups carried out a retaliatory operation against the usurping entity.

Since the start of the offensive, the Tel Aviv regime has killed around 33,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.   “The resolution must be implemented without delay,” Guterres said.