UNITED NATIONS, Nov 10 (APP): With Israel escalating its attacks on Gaza, the UN Security Council is due to meet at 3 pm local (Around 1 a.m. PST Saturday) to discuss the ongoing Israel-Palestine crisis as negotiations continue behind the scenes to reach some consensus position within the 15-member body over the war raging in the battered enclave.
After multiple efforts to find a unified response since October 7 and the full-scale siege and incursion into Gaza by Israeli forces, the Security Council is meeting to hear a briefing by World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and by the Director General of the Palestine Red Crescent Society Marwan Jilani on the ground situation.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) called for the meeting, citing “the spiralling health crisis amidst continued attacks on hospitals.”
This will be the seventh time that the Council has convened on the current crisis since 7th October.
“We keep hoping and yearning for a united message from the Security Council to see an end to the conflict in Gaza; it hasn’t happened,” Stephane Dujarric, Spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, told reporters at UN Headquarters earlier on Friday.
Meanwhile, More than 100 United Nations employees have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza, the UN Palestinian Refugee Agency (UNRWA) said on Friday, making it the deadliest conflict ever for the UN in such a short time.
Some were killed queuing for bread; others died along with their families in their homes, UNRWA said, amid Israel’s brutal and indiscriminate aerial and ground war in densely populated Gaza.
“They represent what is happening to the people of Gaza. They happen to work for the UN,” said Juliette Touma, Director of Communications at UNRWA. “They and every other civilian in the Gaza Strip…should never have been killed.”
Israel has killed over 11,000 civilians in Gaza since October 7, mostly women, children and the elderly.
APP/ift