Israel must protect aid workers in Gaza: Blinken
WARSAW: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on Thursday for the protection of aid workers after UN staffers were killed in Gaza.
And he argued that a Usbacked ceasefire was the best way to ensure their safety.
“We need to see humanitarian sites protected, and that’s something that we continue to raise with Israel,” Blinken told reporters on a visit to Poland.
Blinken, however, also said that Hamas — at war with Israel since its October 7 attack — bore some responsibility.
“We continue to see Hamas hiding in, taking over, and otherwise using these sites from which to conduct its operations,” Blinken said.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA said six of its staffers had been killed in two Israeli air raids on the Nuseirat school and its surroundings, drawing statements of outrage around the world.
“I think it also underscores, once again, the urgency of reaching a ceasefire,” Blinken said. Blinken, who has been pushing for a truce deal for weeks.
A ceasefire was “the best way of ensuring that we have a genuinely protected space throughout Gaza, a space in which the humanitarians can not only continue to do their work but massively increase it to the benefit of people who desperately need it”, he said.
RARE EVACUATION:
Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation said on Thursday it had carried out a rare evacuation of 97 people, around half of them children, from Gaza to the UAE for medical treatment, and urged the resumption of regular such transfers.
The Israel-hamas conflict has decimated Gaza’s health system and only 17 out of 36 hospitals are currently partially functioning, the WHO estimates.
The main Rafah crossing for medical transfers out of Gaza to Egypt has been shut since May when Israel ramped up its military campaign in southern Gaza.
“This was the largest evacuation yet from Gaza since October 2023,” Richard Peeperkorn, WHO Representative for the occupied Palestinian territory told reporters of the operation, which took place on Wednesday.
The patients included people suffering from cancer, blood and kidney diseases and trauma, he said.
They were evacuated by road and then by air from Israel’s Ramon airport.
“Gaza needs medical corridors. We need a better organised and sustained system,” he said, adding that over 10,000 Gazans were awaiting transfer. Peeperkorn also said that more than 500,000 children in Gaza had now been vaccinated in the first phase of a polio campaign set to end in northern Gaza on Thursday.