Middle East war

International UN employee killed for the first time

Massive destruction in the northern Gaza Strip(Bild: APA/AFP)

A United Nations employee has been killed in an attack on a vehicle in the Gaza Strip. In addition, a group of far-right Israeli activists is said to have stopped aid transports for the civilian population in the Gaza Strip on Monday.

According to a spokesperson on Monday, it is the first time since the escalation of violence seven months ago that an international UN employee has been killed in the Gaza Strip, and another UN employee was injured in the incident, according to the world organization. The exact background, nationality and gender of the victims initially remained unclear.

However, the car in which the employees were traveling to a hospital was clearly marked as a UN vehicle. In total, almost 200 UN employees have been killed since the beginning of the Gaza war - so far all of them have been Palestinians.

Israeli right-wing extremists stop aid transports
Meanwhile, according to press reports, a group of right-wing extremist Israeli activists stopped aid transports for the civilian population in the Gaza Strip on Monday. The trucks were blocked at the border crossing between the southern West Bank and Israel, according to Israeli and Palestinian media. The newspaper "The Times of Israel" reported that four of the hundred or so activists had been arrested. According to the protesters' lawyers, one of them was a minor.

Damaged trucks carrying humanitarian aid(Bild: APA/AFP/Oren ZIV)

Nine trucks were damaged during the protest at the Tarkumiyeh checkpoint west of Hebron in the occupied West Bank. The activists also pulled aid from the trucks. Footage circulated on the internet shows activists throwing the truckloads onto the ground. Cartons burst open and the contents were scattered across the road.

Seven months after the start of the Israeli military operation against the Islamist Hamas, more than one million people in the Gaza Strip are affected by acute food insecurity and threatened by hunger, according to the UN emergency aid office OCHA. The World Food Program (WFP) had warned of a famine in the north of the coastal strip, many parts of which have been destroyed. According to a report, child malnutrition is progressing rapidly there.

Hamas: No more contact with guards of four hostages
As the situation continues to deteriorate, concern for the abducted Israeli hostages is growing. According to a spokesman, Islamist Hamas has lost contact with the guards of four Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip following Israeli air strikes over the past ten days. Among these hostages is the US-Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin, wrote a spokesman for the Qassam Brigades - the military arm of the Islamist Hamas - on the Telegram news channel. Goldberg-Polin was seen in a Hamas propaganda video a good two weeks ago.

When and under what circumstances it was made remained unknown. It was the first sign of life of the 23-year-old, who was captured by Hamas terrorists on October 7 as one of the visitors to the Nova music festival and abducted to the Gaza Strip.

On October 7, around 1200 people were killed and 250 others taken hostage in the unprecedented massacre by Hamas and other Islamist groups in Israel. The terrorist attack triggered the Gaza war, in which Israel is taking action against Hamas, which is entrenched in the middle of residential areas and in numerous tunnels.