89 UN Staff Members Killed in Gaza in Israeli Attacks to Date

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said Tuesday that 89 UN aid workers have been killed since the latest round of Israel-Hamas conflict broke out on October 7.

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The aid agency's latest situation report notes that this is the highest number of UN employees killed in a conflict in UN history.

The UN office in Geneva paid tribute to UNRWA employees killed in Gaza in the indiscriminate and intensified attacks by Israeli forces.

UN officials and staff observed a minute's silence to remember them, a moment that UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) spokesman Jens Laerke called "a solemn and deeply sad moment at UN Geneva today, in honor of our UNRWA colleagues killed in Gaza."

UNRWA is the lead UN agency operating in the Gaza Strip, where its schools are currently hosting nearly 725,000 displaced Palestinians seeking refuge from relentless Israeli attacks.

Some 149 UNRWA facilities are serving as shelters in Gaza's five governorates, including the north, at a time when at least 10,328 Palestinians, including 4,237 children and 2,719 women, have been killed. 

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, overcrowding in UN facilities in Gaza remains a major concern. At the Khan Younis Training Center, where 22,000 displaced persons were sheltered, the space per person is less than two square meters, and there is one toilet for every 600 people.

These extremely difficult conditions are in addition to the constant Israeli attacks directly targeting UNRWA facilities. In the last 24 hours, a UNRWA school in northern Gaza was directly hit by the attacks. One person was killed and nine were injured among internally displaced persons sheltering in the school.