The renewed Israeli military operations in Gaza since the collapse of the ceasefire in mid-March presents a war without limits, the top United Nations interim official for the Occupied Palestinian Territories said Wednesday.
Speaking from Gaza, Jonathan Whittall told journalists during an April 2 briefing at UN headquarters that Palestinians were being shot in the back as they ran for cover from Israel’s endless shelling and other bombardments. He described the enclave as a “death trap.”
“What is happening here defies decency, it defies humanity, it defies the law. It really is a war without limits,” Whittall said. “It’s an endless loop of blood, pain, and death.”
In the past few days alone, 100,000 people have been displaced, a recurring pattern for Gazans since Israel has been retaliating for the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre by Hamas and other militias. Whittall said that 64 percent of Gaza is under active forced displacement orders or falls within what is being called a “buffer zone”– a no-go area to civilians.
The fragile ceasefire that began in mid-January enabled thousands of Gazans to return to their homes from displacement camps collapsed on March 18, when Israel launched airstrikes across the enclave while people were asleep. Gaza’s Ministry of Health said at least 400 people — many of them children — were killed in a single day.
Humanitarian workers are also being targeted and killed as Israel intensifies its intention to root out Hamas. Whittall said the gruesome killing of 15 humanitarian aid and emergency workers, including a UN staffer, by the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, in late March is “emblematic of the point that we’ve reached in Gaza.”
The workers were paramedics with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society as well as rescue workers with the Palestinian Civil Defense and a UN staffer who arrived at the scene of an airstrike in a district of Rafah, southern Gaza, amid the early hours of March 23. The UN said that “the first team” of rescuers “had been killed by Israeli forces on 23 March; the other emergency and aid crews were struck one after another over several hours as they searched for their missing colleagues.”
In total, the 15 bodies were found buried in a shallow, sandy grave during a weeklong rescue operation that ended on March 30. They also uncovered a UN vehicle, ambulances and a fire truck, all crushed. The victims were still in their uniforms, wearing gloves with their hands tied.
According to Whittall, one survivor said that the Israelis killed both of the crew in his ambulance. The body of one more Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance driver is still missing, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
While officials from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or UNOCHA, drove to the site, Whittall tweeted on March 30 that they “witnessed a woman shot in the back of the head.” When a “young man tried to retrieve her, he too was shot.”
“They were killed while trying to save lives,” Whittall noted in his April 2 press briefing. “When the ceasefire was holding, we were delivering. We were able to deliver far more than we’ve ever been able to. Now, we’re collecting the dead bodies of first responders.”
Tom Fletcher, the head of UNOCHA, tweeted on March 30 that “we demand answers & justice” for the killing of the aid workers.
The United States was unlikely to agree to a UN Security Council statement about the killings, a diplomat told PassBlue, but Algeria, an elected member, called for an emergency session to be held on April 3 on the matter.
Amar Bendjama, Algeria’s UN envoy, said in the chamber on April 2 of the people killed: “They deserve justice. We should speak out. We need the voice of the Security Council and the broader UN membership to be loud and clear.”
Israel said that the aid workers killed and buried in the site were “terrorists advancing in ambulances” but provided no proof. Whittall, formerly with Médecins Sans Frontière, said the workers were paramedics he has known for years.
The incident has been transferred to the Israeli General Staff’s Fact-Finding and Assessment Mechanism for investigation, an IDF spokesperson told media in a statement. A forensic doctor who examined some of the bodies reportedly said there was evidence of execution-style killing, based on the “specific and intentional” location of shots at close range.
Dorothy Shea, the US interim chief of mission at the UN, repeated IDF’s defense, saying on April 3 in the Security Council that “uncoordinated vehicles were identified advancing toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals.”
The killings follow closely the March 19 death of a UN Office for Project Services staffer from Bulgaria and numerous other people injured by an explosion attributed by the UN to the IDF at a UN guesthouse in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza. The building was used by top UN officials while visiting the enclave.
At least 408 aid workers — 280 of them were UN staffers — have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7. Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the killings and called on all parties to respect international law. “Medical personnel and humanitarian and emergency workers must be protected by all parties to the conflict at all times, as required by international humanitarian law,” Guterres said in a statement on April 2.
In the Security Council, Joyce Msuya, the assistant secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, said this week that aid workers are being killed in unprecedented numbers across several conflict zones globally. The number of fatalities recorded for such workers has been rising since 2022. Msuya said 377 aid workers were killed in 2024, almost a hundred more people than in 2023, marking a 137 percent increase from 2022. She said 85 humanitarian workers have been killed since the Sudan war began in April 2023.
Msuya, exhibiting more emotion than usual in her remarks to the chamber, called on the members to explore the relevant frameworks and laws to end the killing of humanitarian workers and to seek justice for those who have died. Most of the workers who have been killed are local people committed to carrying out the Council’s mandate to provide help.
“Being shot at is not, I repeat, not part of our job,” Msuya said.
Humanitarian workers are also being criminalized for doing their job; they are detained, interrogated and accused of supporting terrorism for delivering aid to needy people, she added. The Israeli government, for example, has accused the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, of harboring Hamas, but rarely providing evidence.
Msuya said increasing disinformation and misinformation campaigns targeting humanitarian workers are also occurring in Yemen, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Targeting responders with false claims is “forcing us to make impossible choices between our mandate to serve the most affected people and the safety of our own teams,” she said.
Msuya listed three ways the Council could stop the killing of UN and other humanitarian workers: upholding international law to protect them, speaking out consistently against attacks on UN personnel and ensuring accountability by prosecuting perpetrators of international crimes.
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Damilola Banjo is an award-winning staff reporter for PassBlue who has covered a wide range of topics, from Africa-centered stories to gender equality to UN peacekeeping and US-UN relations. She also oversees all video production for PassBlue. She was a Dag Hammarskjold fellow in 2023 and a Pulitzer Center postgraduate fellow in 2021. She was part of the BBC Africa team that produced the Emmy-nominated documentary, “Sex for Grades.” In addition, she worked for WFAE, an NPR affiliate in Charlotte, N.C. Banjo has a master’s of science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and an undergraduate degree from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria.
Dear Damilola, thank you for a this important article but let me voice my deep disappointment with the conclusion: does Msuya know that the weapons used to kill aid workers and UN staff are made available to Israel by the US, a member of the UN Security Council? This member will not adhere to the three rules outlined in the conclusion in terms of ending the killings of the UN and other humanitarian workers! Let us wake-up and see the light!