The figure was confirmed on social media by Juliette Touma, head of communications for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). “While we were preparing the statements of Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner general of UNRWA, before the UN Security Council, we received terrible news: Our colleague Samir was killed along with his wife and eight children. We mourn him and his family,” she wrote.

Last Friday, Lazzarini launched a dramatic call for an urgent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. “History will judge us if a ceasefire is not established in the Gaza Strip, where many people have died under the bombs, but many more will lose their lives due to the blockade,” she warned, stressing that “no one will be able to say ‘I didn’t know’ because the images, footage and voices of indescribable suffering arrive every hour from there.”

“Why doesn’t the world have the will to act and put an end to this hell on earth?” Juliette questioned during a news conference in Jerusalem.

Lazzarini accused Israel of imposing collective punishment against 2.3 million Palestinians by cutting off food, water and fuel supplies.

Although she recognized the importance of the entry of several caravans of trucks carrying humanitarian aid from Egypt, she assured that they are insufficient, given the dimension of the crisis. “These convoys will not reverse the fact that Gaza is being strangled, while its people feel rejected, alienated and abandoned,” she denounced. “We must avoid transmitting the message that a few trucks a day mean that the siege has been lifted, this is not true, that system is destined to fail,” she stressed.

“Civilians have paid an astonishing price, over a million people were displaced, entire neighborhoods razed, thousands have died, thousands more have been injured and they almost no longer have access to hospitals,” she said.

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