Israeli airstrike in Gaza kills UN worker, his family

A United Nations aid worker and his family were killed Friday near Gaza City, the same day that aid agencies sharply criticized the UN Security Council for passing a resolution that did not call for a full cease-fire in the besieged enclave.

An Israeli airstrike killed Issam al-Mughrabi, who had worked at the UN Development Program for 30 years, his wife and his five children, Achim Steiner, an administrator at the agency, said in a statement.

“The loss of Issam and his family has deeply affected us all,” he said. “The UN and civilians in Gaza are not a target.”

Steiner said members of his extended family may have been killed also, but that could not be confirmed.

The Israeli military did not comment on the report.

The strike that killed al-Mughrabi underscored the scope of Israel’s continuing bombardment of Gaza’s densely populated areas with heavy munitions, which UN officials have said is not only taking lives but making it nearly impossible to distribute aid.

The bombardment is killing civilians at a devastating pace, with the Gaza Health Ministry reporting about 20,000 people killed — a majority of them women and children — in the past 77 days of fighting. Bombings can often claim almost all of an extended family. Areas designated as safe for civilians have been routinely assailed by 2,000-pound bombs.

UN. workers, too, have been killed in large numbers. At least 136 workers from UNRWA — the agency that cares for Palestinian refugees and employs around 13,000 people in Gaza — have been killed in the conflict. It’s the highest death toll recorded in the history of the United Nations.

On Saturday morning, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported that about 200 people had been killed and another 368 injured by Israeli military operations since Friday.

Senior UN. officials and many aid agencies have argued that a full cease-fire is needed to allow the distribution of aid to nearly 1.9 million displaced Palestinians, many of whom face spreading disease, hunger and an overwhelmed health care system.

“The way Israel is conducting its offensive is creating massive obstacles to the distribution of humanitarian aid inside Gaza,” UN. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a post on social media Friday.