GENEVA: United Nat­ions workers observed a minute’s silence and flags flew at half-mast at UN co­m­pounds across the globe on Monday to honour the more than 100 em­p­loyees killed since hostilities began in Gaza last month, the largest dea­th toll of workers in the orga­nisation’s 78-year history.

In Gaza City, witnesses reported intense overnight air strikes with Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles just metres from the Al Shifa hospital.

Health authorities said hospitals in northern Gaza were no longer functioning amid fuel shortages and raging combat.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the organisation for supporting Palestinians, said on Friday that 101 of its employees died in Gaza Strip since Oct 7.

Staff at UN offices in Geneva bowed their heads as a candle was lit in memory of the deceased UNRWA employees.

“This is the highest nu­mber of aid workers kil­l­ed in the history of our org­anisation in such a short time,” said Tatiana Valov­aya, Director Gene­ral of the UN office in Geneva.

In Geneva, the second-largest UN headquarters after New York, the UN flag flew at half-mast and none of the other flags of the 193 member countries were hoisted along the main alley of the compound.

The blue and white UN flag was lowered at offices in Bangkok, Tokyo and Beijing. Events were also held in Kathmandu and Kabul, where the UN secretary general’s special representative for Afghanistan led about 250 people in observing the minute’s silence.

Established in 1949 following the first Arab-Israeli war, UNRWA provides public services including schools, healthcare and aid. Many of UNRWA’s 5,000 employees working in Gaza are Palestinian refugees themselves.

Hospitals stop functioning

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said hospitals in the north were no longer working amid fuel shortages and intense combat, with the death toll inside the territory’s largest facility rising.

Israel alleges Hamas has built its headquarters under the Al Shifa hospital complex, while UN agencies and doctors in the facility warned a lack of generator fuel was claiming lives.

The Gaza government’s deputy health minister Youssef Abu Rish said the death toll inside Al Shifa had risen to 27 adult intensive care patients and seven babies since the weekend as the facility suffered fuel shortages.

Gaza has been reliant on generators for over a month after Israel cut off power supplies following the Oct 7 raid and the besieged territory’s only power plant ran out of fuel.

Abu Rish said all hospitals were out of service in the territory’s north, where black smoke rose from a bombed mosque and a rare person on the street carried a white flag.

According to the World Health Organisation, nearly 2,300 people — patients, health workers and people fleeing fighting — were inside the crippled Al Shifa.

“There are many dead and hundreds of wounded that no one can get to,” the WHO said.

“Ambulances are at a standstill because they get shot at when they go out,” hospital director Mohammad Abu Salmiya said.

Israel is facing intense international pressure to minimise civilian suffering amid its massive air and ground operations that Hamas authorities say have killed 11,180 people, including 4,609 children.

Israel says 44 of its troops have been killed in Gaza Strip.

A lack of fuel was also hitting the UNRWA, with the group’s Gaza chief Thomas White saying operations “will grind to a halt in the next 48 hours as no fuel is allowed to enter” the territory.

More heavy fighting

The Israeli military reported “more heavy fighting” on Monday. Teams of Israeli troops ran between jagged ruins in Gaza while air strikes shown on grainy military-released video shattered buildings.

Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh urged the European Union and the United Nations to “parachute aid” into Gaza.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas must first release prisoners before any ceasefire would be considered, but he told US media that “there could be” a deal in the works.

Israel’s military said it would observe a “self-evacuation corridor” on Monday, allowing people to move from Al Shifa southward, but admitted the area was still the scene of “intense battles”.

The sphere of fighting “currently includes the area surrounding the Al Shifa Hospital, but not the hospital itself”, a spokesperson for Israel’s military said.

Al Shifa director Abu Salmiya said he told Israeli authorities he needed at least 8,000 litres to run the main generators and “save hundreds of patients and wounded, but they refused”.

‘Meaningful’ pauses

The European Union’s humanitarian aid chief has called for “meaningful” pauses in the fighting in Gaza and urgent deliveries of fuel to keep hospitals working.

“It is urgent to define and respect humanitarian pauses,” Janez Lenarcic, European Commissioner for Crisis Management, told a meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers in Brussels.

“Fuel needs to get in. As you could see, more than half of the hospitals in Gaza Strip stopped working, primarily because of lack of fuel, and fuel is desperately needed.”

The bloc’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell insisted that “Gaza needs more aid from any point of view”.

“Water, fuel, food. This aid is available, is in the border waiting to come in,” he said.

Borrell announced that he would travel to “Israel, Palestine, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan this week to discuss huma­nitarian access and assistance and political issues with regional leaders”.

Luxembourg’s foreign minister, Jean Asselborn, said that hospitals in Gaza should not be turned into “battlefields”.

“Patients who are in intensive care units have no chance,” he said.

“There is no more oxygen, there is no more water, there are no more medicines. So these people are going to die.”

Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2023