UNRWA’S SPOKESPERSON BROKE down in tears while carrying out a TV interview on the continuing crisis in Gaza.
Chris Gunness of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees in the near East was speaking after today’s shelling of a UN school housing Palestinian refugees.
“The rights of Palestinians, even their children, are wholesale denied and it’s appalling,” he said before being overcome with emotion:
Gunness also tweeted his frustrations over the danger facing his staff and the scale of the tasks they face:
The US issued some of their strongest comments on the violence yet in their criticism of the school attack, but did not assign blame for the incident.
“Obviously nothing justifies the killing of innocent civilians seeking shelter in a UN facility,” deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said today.
Harf stressed that ”Innocent Palestinians seeking refuge in these schools should not have shells dropped on them, should not come under attack,” and added, “we don’t know for certain who shelled this school, we need to get all the facts.”
This afternoon, at least 17 people were killed in an Israeli strike on a busy market in Gaza during a limited ‘humanitarian’ ceasefire announced earlier today by the Israeli military.
The IDF declared a “humanitarian window in Gaza from 15:00 to 19:00″ to allow the evacuation of the dead and wounded, though the military said the ceasefire would not be in effect in areas where its soldiers were operating.
- Additional reporting by the AFP
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say