One of five Doctors Without Borders vehicles destroyed by Israeli forces outside a clinic in Gaza where aid workers were killed
© MSF

United Nations, November 23 (RHC)--  The United Nations says 2024 has become the deadliest year for humanitarians, amid Israel’s genocidal campaign in the Gaza Strip that has been driving up the number of aid worker fatalities.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 281 aid workers have been killed around the world so far this year.  "Before the year is even over, 2024 has become the deadliest on record for humanitarian personnel worldwide," the OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke said, noting that 280 humanitarians were killed during all of 2023.

Humanitarians "are working courageously and selflessly in places like Gaza, Sudan, Lebanon, Ukraine and so on. They show the best humanity has to offer, and they are getting killed in return — in record numbers," Laerke told reporters in Geneva.  "These numbers will send shockwaves around the humanitarian community, especially on the front lines of the response," he warned.

Tom Fletcher, the United Nations' new under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator also said "This violence is unconscionable and devastating to aid operations."  "States and parties to conflict must protect humanitarians, uphold international law, prosecute those responsible, and call time on this era of impunity," Fletcher said.  According to Fletcher’s office, Israel's genocidal war on Gaza was driving up the numbers.

On Friday, the database showed that some 230 aid workers have been killed in occupied Palestinian areas, without specifying whether that was Gaza or the West Bank.  OCHA said a total of 333 humanitarians, most from the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), have been killed since the war erupted on October 7, 2023.

Noting that the majority of deaths involve local staff working with non-governmental organizations, UN agencies and the Red Cross Red Crescent movement, Fletcher's office said "Violence against humanitarian personnel is part of a broader trend of harm to civilians in conflict zones."

"Last year, more than 33,000 civilian deaths were recorded in 14 armed conflicts -- a staggering 72 percent increase from 2022."

Israel launched a genocidal war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime's decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.

The regime’s bloody onslaught on Gaza has so far killed over 44,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured over 104,200. Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under rubble.

Israel has ramped up violence against Palestinians in the West Bank since it launched the genocidal war in Gaza, killing hundreds of Palestinians and abducting thousands of others.

[ SOURCE: PRESS TV and NEWS AGENCIES ]