a day ago
Zionist entity forces killed 181 of 383 aid workers in 2024
KHAN YUNIS: Members of the Palestine Red Crescent and other emergency services carry bodies of fellow rescuers killed by Zionist forces in March 2025. — AFP
GENEVA: Aid worker killings rose nearly a third to almost 400 last year, the most deadly year since records began in 1997, and the conflict in Gaza is continuing to cause high death rates for humanitarian staff in 2025, UN and other data showed. In 2024, 383 aid workers were killed, nearly half of them in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories, the UN said on Tuesday, citing a database.
'Attacks on this scale, with zero accountability, are a shameful indictment of international inaction and apathy,' said Tom Fletcher, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs in a statement. So far this year, 265 aid workers have been killed, according to provisional data from the Aid Worker Security Database, a US-funded platform that compiles reports on major security incidents affecting aid workers.
Of those, 173 were in Gaza in the Zionist entity's near two-year genocidal war on Gaza, the provisional data showed. This year, 36 aid workers have so far been killed in Sudan and three in Ukraine, the database showed. In one incident in Gaza that drew international condemnation, 15 emergency and aid workers were killed by Zionist forces in three separate shootings in March, before being buried in a shallow grave.
Aid workers enjoy protection under international humanitarian law but experts cite few precedents for such cases going to trial, with concerns about ensuring future access for aid groups and difficulty proving intent cited as impediments. 'It is catastrophic, and the trend is going in right the opposite direction of what it should,' said Jens Laerke, UN humanitarian office spokesperson. — Reuters
