{"id":83353,"date":"2025-07-22T14:09:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T14:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/83353\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T14:09:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T14:09:10","slug":"israel-bombs-who-facilities-in-gaza-as-global-outcry-grows-israel-gaza-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/83353\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel bombs WHO facilities in Gaza as global outcry grows | Israel-Gaza war"},"content":{"rendered":"

Israel has bombed warehousing and staff accommodation in Gaza belonging to the World Health Organization<\/a> amid intensifying international horror at its continuing attacks on starving civilians and on humanitarian efforts in the devastated Palestinian territory.<\/p>\n

The airstrikes, which struck the UN global health agency\u2019s facilities in Deir al-Balah \u2013 the focus of a recent offensive by the Israeli military<\/a> \u2013 came as Israel cancelled the work visa of Jonathan Whittall, the head of the UN\u2019s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) inside Gaza and the most senior UN aid official in the coastal strip.<\/p>\n

Hours after a hard-hitting joint statement<\/a> on Monday by 27 western countries including the UK, France, Australia and Canada harshly criticising Israel\u2019s restrictions on humanitarian aid and calling for an immediate end to the war, the UN\u2019s secretary general, Ant\u00f3nio Guterres, warned that the \u201clast lifelines keeping people alive [in Gaza] are collapsing\u201d, adding that humanitarian efforts were \u201cbeing impeded, undermined and endangered\u201d.<\/p>\n

Smoke rises as displaced Palestinian walk with their belongings in the aftermath of an Israeli military operation in Deir al-Balah. Photograph: Hatem Khaled\/Reuters<\/p>\n

He said he \u201cdeplored the growing reports of children and adults suffering from malnutrition\u201d as health officials in Gaza<\/a> reported a further 15 deaths from malnutrition in the previous 24 hours, including four children.<\/p>\n

The UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, on Tuesday amplified that message in an interview with the BBC, describing himself as \u201cappalled [and] sickened\u201d<\/a> by what was happening in Gaza.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are not words that are usually used by a foreign secretary who is attempting to be diplomatic,\u201d Lammy said. \u201cBut when you see innocent children holding out their hand for food, and you see them shot and killed in the way that we have seen in the last few days, of course Britain must call it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The EU\u2019s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, also said on Tuesday that she had told the Israeli foreign minister that Israel\u2019s military \u201cmust stop\u201d killing civilians at aid distribution points in Gaza.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe killing of civilians seeking aid in Gaza is indefensible. I spoke again with Gideon Saar to recall our understanding on aid flow and made clear that IDF [Israel Defense Forces] <\/strong>must stop killing people at distribution points,\u201d she wrote on X.<\/p>\n

Graphically underlining the scale of the intensifying humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, the head of the UN\u2019s main agency for Palestinians, Unrwa, said on Tuesday that more than 1,000 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces in recent weeks as they sought food aid, describing Gaza as a \u201chell on earth\u201d.<\/p>\n

Philippe Lazzarini said Unrwa\u2019s own staff, as well as doctors and humanitarian workers, were fainting on duty due to hunger and exhaustion as Israel limited access to life-saving humanitarian aid, and that many were surviving on a single small meal a day.<\/p>\n

\u201cCaretakers, including Unrwa colleagues in Gaza, are also in need of care now, doctors, nurses, journalists, humanitarians, among them Unrwa staff, are hungry. Many are now fainting due to hunger and exhaustion while performing their duties,\u201d he said in a statement at a media briefing in Geneva.<\/p>\n

The UN World Food Programme on Monday said its assessments showed a quarter of the population of Gaza was facing \u201cfamine-like\u201d conditions<\/a> and almost 100,000 women and children were suffering from severe acute malnutrition.<\/p>\n

Displaced Palestinians inspect shelters damaged during the Israeli military operation. Photograph: Hatem Khaled\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Separately, the Roman Catholic church\u2019s most senior cleric in the Holy Land said the humanitarian situation in Gaza was \u201cmorally unacceptable\u201d, after visiting the wartorn Palestinian territory.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have seen men holding out in the sun for hours in the hope of a simple meal,\u201d Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, told a news conference: \u201cIt\u2019s morally unacceptable and unjustified.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the high-profile criticism in recent days, aid agencies have criticised the lack of meaningful action by the governments who signed the joint statement, including the UK, against Israel.<\/p>\n

Kristyan Benedict, of Amnesty International UK, said the British government\u2019s \u201cfailure to take robust measures to prevent genocide is no accident\u201d, adding that \u201cas a state party to the genocide convention, the UK has a legal duty to prevent and punish genocide \u2013 a duty it is failing miserably to uphold\u201d.<\/p>\n

The growing international furore came as Israeli troops pushed into the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, where a number of international aid organisations are based, in what appeared to be the latest effort to carve up the Palestinian territory with military corridors.<\/p>\n

Deir al-Balah is the only Gaza city that has not experienced major ground operations or suffered widespread devastation in 21 months of war, leading to speculation that the Hamas militant group holds large numbers of hostages there.<\/p>\n

Israel says the seizure of territory in Gaza is aimed at pressuring Hamas to release hostages, but it is a major point of contention in ongoing ceasefire talks. However, the latest Israeli offensive in Gaza comes amid fears that its ultimate aim is to expel large parts of its population of more than 2 million by making the territory uninhabitable.<\/p>\n

Israel justified its cancellation of Whittall\u2019s visa on the alleged grounds of anti-Israel bias. In a statement, Ocha defended its local head\u2019s strong remarks when describing what he was seeing in Gaza.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpeaking about conditions we see on the ground is a core element of Ocha\u2019s mandate,\u201d the agency said. \u201cAttempts to silence us are not new, but threats of reduced access to the civilians we\u2019re trying to serve are intensifying.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israel has bombed warehousing and staff accommodation in Gaza belonging to the World Health Organization amid intensifying international…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":83354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[51,50,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-83353","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114897286929269953","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}