The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the main food distribution group in Gaza, has suspended operations, claiming Israel killed a UN driver. UNRWA announced Thursday that it would suspend its operations in Gaza until further notice.
“UNRWA has decided to suspend its operations in the Gaza Strip due to hostile activities targeting its workers,” the group said. UNRWA officials have accused Israel of killing one of the group's workers.
UN workers allege that Israeli soldiers fired on truck drivers near the Erez crossing in northern Gaza on Thursday afternoon, killing one. The trucks were clearly marked as UN vehicles, they said. IDF officials say they will investigate the claim.
The dead driver was identified as Adnan abu-Hasna.
Hours after the UN charged Israel with the killing, a MDA paramedic reported that the driver had been shot by Hamas snipers, and not killed by an IDF tank shell. The driver and two other drivers who were badly injured suffered bullet wounds, not shrapnel injuries, the medic said.
The medic said IDF soldiers had also reported that the drivers were shot. The soldiers ran into Gaza to rescue the two wounded drivers, endangering their own lives, the medic said. Arab medics disputed his report, and said they had brought the wounded drivers to the crossing. The wounded were taken to Barzilai hospital in Ashkelon.
On Tuesday evening, Gaza residents reported that an IDF tank shell had hit a UN-run school, killing 40 people who had taken shelter in the building, among them 10 children. UN officials in Gaza accused Israel of firing on the school for no reason.
IDF troops said they had responded to mortar fire from the direction of the school. The tank shells fired by soldiers ignited explosives hidden near the building, setting off powerful secondary blasts that were responsible for most of the deaths, they said.
UNRWA distributes food to approximately 750,000 residents of Gaza, and runs many of the area's schools. It was created to help Arabs who fled pre-State Israel during the War of Independence, and later began assisting their descendants as well. UNRWA defines all descendants of Arabs who lived in pre-state Israel as "refugees."
Red Cross Accuses Israel of Delaying Access
The Red Cross slammed Israel on Thursday as well, claiming that Israel had delayed ambulances as they attempted to enter Gaza. The international organization demanded that Israel allow ambulances from the Palestinian Authority's Red Crescent to access areas in which soldiers are fighting Hamas in order to evacuate the wounded.
Red Cross workers said they had found 12 corpses and 19 people in houses in the Zeitun neighborhood of Gaza City following intense fighting. They accused the IDF of war crimes, saying soldiers had failed to help those who survived the battles, some of them children.
The IDF sent out this statement in response: "The Israel Defense Forces is engaged in a battle with the Hamas terrorist organization that has deliberately used Palestinian civilians as human shields. The IDF works in close cooperation with international aid organizations during the fighting so that civilians can be provided with assistance."
"The IDF in no way intentionally targets civilians," the statement continued, "and has demonstrated its willingness to abort operations to save civilian lives and to risk injury in order to assist innocent civilians. Any serious allegations made against the IDF's conduct will need to be investigated properly, once such a complaint is received formally, within the constraints of the current military operation."