The United Nations said on Monday that the Gaza Strip has become the most dangerous place in the world for aid workers.
At least 250 aid workers have been killed since war began there on Oct. 7, the United Nations said, and on Monday it said around 200 of them worked for UNRWA, the main agency helping Palestinian refugees, further hampering an organization already struggling to deliver aid in the region.
Aid groups say most of the danger comes from Israeli bombing and airstrikes. Eight months of war have devastated Gaza, killing more than 37,000 Gazans, according to local health officials. Israel launched a retaliatory operation in Gaza after Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel killed about 1,200 people and abducted about 240, according to Israeli officials.
The dangers facing humanitarian workers in the Gaza Strip are halting or blocking the distribution of badly needed aid in an area where aid groups warn hundreds of thousands of people are facing starvation.
It was unclear how many aid workers were killed in Israeli attacks while conducting humanitarian operations, but at least some of UNRWA’s 193 staff were killed, said Inas Hamdan, UNRWA’s acting spokesperson in Gaza.
“The airstrikes and bombings will never stop,” Hamdan said, adding that “a stable situation is necessary for humanitarian aid to be effective.”
In early May, the International Crisis Group think tank said that the open-source Aid Worker Safety Database, which tracks attacks on aid workers around the world, had documented 234 deaths in 308 incidents targeting aid workers in the Gaza Strip, the highest number of incidents recorded in a single year of conflict since 1997, the group said.
But beyond Israeli bombing, the crisis group said the deaths of aid workers in Gaza were also due to a poor system of communication and coordination with the Israeli army to ensure the safe movement of aid workers.
COGAT, the arm of the Israeli military that enforces government policy in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, did not immediately respond to questions about the system, known as deconfliction.
Dr. Taniya Haji Hassan, a pediatric intensive care physician who has visited many conflict zones in her work with aid organizations, spent two weeks in late March volunteering with Palestinian medical aid at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Barra, mainly treating victims of airstrikes. She said de-escalation involves informing parties to the conflict of aid workers’ arrival and destination so they do not target them.
She said the deconfliction process in Gaza was a “farce” and aid workers were coming under attack despite there being no military targets nearby.
“Nothing can compare to what I experienced in Gaza – the constant drone and physical bombings and the constant possibility of not knowing when you or the building you were in could be attacked,” Dr. Haji Hassan said.
She added: “We have no guarantee of safety.”
In April, seven employees of the World Central Kitchen were killed in an Israeli airstrike, even though aid groups said they had coordinated the convoy’s movement with the Israeli military.
The military later said in a statement that the “serious error” resulted from a series of mistakes, including “misidentification, poor decision-making and an attack that violated standard operating procedures.”
Israel’s own explanation for the attack raises questions about its military’s ability to identify civilians, its procedures for protecting them and whether it is complying with international law, legal experts told The New York Times after the attack.