UN says 12 of its staff have been killed in Gaza, including 5 teachers and a doctor

Palestinian men walk amid the rubble of a UN school in Gaza City, which was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike.

Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images

• Israeli airstrikes on Gaza have killed a dozen UN aid workers, a spokesperson told Insider.
• The dead include five teachers, a gynecologist, and a psychologist.
• "Many of them were killed with their families," the spokesperson said.

At least a dozen UN aid workers have been killed in the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, a spokesperson told Insider on Thursday, demonstrating the dire risks being faced by non-combatants in the Palestinian territory.

"Many of them were killed while with their families," Juliette Touma, director of communications for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, said in an interview. The dead, who were all Palestinians, included five teachers, a gynecologist, a psychologist, and support staff, she said.

It is not known how many of their family members were also killed.

"I want people to know that there are civilians — really civilians — who are being killed in Gaza," Touma said.

UNRWA was created to support the hundreds of thousands of people displaced around the time of Israel's founding in 1948. It runs a network of medical facilities in Gaza, as well as schools that are now serving as shelters for nearly 220,000 Palestinian civilians.

Initially, UNWRA said 11 of its employees had been killed in the Israeli attacks, but a 12th fatality was confirmed overnight, Touma said. The agency employs more than 5,300 people in Gaza.

Israel launched an aggressive counterattack on Gaza following a devastating terrorist attack last Saturday in which militants from Hamas and other Palestinian factions slaughtered hundreds of civilians, including women and babies.

As of Thursday afternoon, Israeli authorities said that at least 1,300 had been killed in the terrorist, the vast majority of them civilians. Another 2,800 people were wounded, and at least 97 are being held hostage.

Israel has cut off all water and electricity to Gaza. Israeli officials said they would restore the vital resources only if Hamas handed over those it kidnapped, which includes children and elderly women, as well as some IDF soldiers. It has urged civilians to avoid areas frequented by Hamas, but the vast majority of the Gaza Strip's 2.3 million residents have nowhere else to go; Egypt, which maintains a border with the territory, has only allowed a few Palestinians to leave.

The death toll has quickly climbed in Gaza as Israel pounds the territory with airstrikes ahead of a possible ground offensive. Local authorities say 1,417 people have been killed in the Israeli response, with another 6,200 wounded.

The Israel Defense Forces did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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