Anushka Patil
The Israeli military confirmed that it had bombed an aid warehouse in Rafah in southern Gaza on Wednesday, saying it had “precisely targeted” and killed a Hamas commander in an attack that the United Nations said also killed at least one aid worker and injured 22 others.
The Israeli military said the Hamas commander, whom it identified as Muhammad Abu Hasna, was “involved in taking control of humanitarian aid” and coordinating “the activities of various Hamas units.”
UNRWA, the U.N. agency that supports Palestinians, said the strike in Gaza’s southernmost city hit one of its facilities that serves as both an aid warehouse and a food distribution center.
The agency, formally the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, is the largest provider of aid on the ground in Gaza and the chief lifeline for the enclave’s 2.2 million residents, more than half of whom have been forced by Israeli military orders or fighting to cram into Rafah.
The UNRWA facility was not distributing food to civilians on Wednesday, but more than 50 staff members were working at the facility when it was hit by Israeli forces around noon, according to Juliette Touma, UNRWA’s director of communications. Physical damage to the facility appeared to be minimal, but the human toll was “quite high” and some of the 22 wounded aid workers were “severely injured,” she said.
Where the warehouse was struck
Photos and video taken by Reuters photographers at the scene showed blood splashed in several locations around the facility: smeared on a warehouse floor surrounded by stacks of aid, soaked into the side of a box of baby supplies and pooled on the ground outdoors. At the nearby Al-Najjar Hospital, where many of the injured were taken, U.N. workers grieved over the body of their dead colleague, who lay on a stretcher still wearing the organization’s signature blue jacket, photos taken by other news agencies showed.
WAFA, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, reported that at least four other people were killed in the strike alongside Mr. Abu Hasna and the UNRWA worker.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the agency, said in a statement that the “attack on one of the very few remaining UNRWA distribution centers in the Gaza Strip comes as food supplies are running out, hunger is widespread and, in some areas, turning into famine.”
At least 165 UNRWA staff members have been killed while working in Gaza since the start of the war, according to the agency. It also said that more than 400 people had been killed while sheltering at UNRWA facilities that had collectively been hit more than 150 times during the war.
Mr. Lazzarini said that UNRWA shared the coordinates of all of its facilities in Gaza on a daily basis with the “parties to the conflict,” and that the Israeli military had received the coordinates of the food distribution center on Tuesday, a day before it was hit.
“Attacks against U.N. facilities, convoys and personnel have become commonplace, in blatant disregard to international humanitarian law,” Mr. Lazzarini said.
Martin Griffiths, the top humanitarian chief at the United Nations, condemned the strike on the warehouse on social media, calling it “devastating” for both aid workers and “for the families they were trying to help.”
“They must be protected,” he said. “This war has to stop.”
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