A foreign UN Department of Security (UNDS) official was killed and another was wounded in an attack on his vehicle in the Rafah area of ​​the southern Gaza Strip.

“It is with deep sadness that the Secretary-General received the news of the death this morning of a United Nations Department of Security staff member and the injury of another staff member when his UN vehicle was hit while en route to the European Hospital in Rafa,” the Secretary-General said. This is stated in a UN statement read by Guterres Deputy Press Secretary Farhan Haq.

Guterres condemns in the text “all attacks on UN personnel” and calls for a full investigation. “He expresses his condolences to the family of the deceased worker,” he noted, before repeating his call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and the release of all hostages.

Haq explained at a press conference that since October 7, some 190 UN staff have been killed in the Gaza Strip, mostly Palestinian staff of the UN Refugee Agency for the Near East (UNRWA), and indicated that according to current data, this Monday will be the first foreign UN worker killed in the Gaza Strip since the start of the large-scale Israeli offensive. “I don’t have citizenship yet that I could give them, but they are not Palestinians,” he noted.

Earlier, Gaza’s government, controlled by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), reported the death of one foreign worker and the injury of another in a fire. an attack on his car, which he attributes to Israel.

“The Israeli occupation army killed a foreign worker and wounded another foreign worker in the Rafah governorate in the southern Gaza Strip, where they were attacked while they were in a United Nations vehicle bearing the organization’s flag and emblems,” the statement said. the press service of the Gaza government in a statement published on Telegram.

It thus condemns “in the strongest possible terms” “the crimes committed by the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian people and against foreigners working in the Gaza Strip” and calls on “all countries of the world” to condemn these crimes.

The Gaza government holds the US administration and Israeli authorities directly responsible for the “war crimes of genocide” and for “deliberate attacks on foreign personnel in the Gaza Strip.” “We ask for an end to the genocidal war and an end to attacks on foreign personnel doing humanitarian work,” he concluded.

It would be the first foreign UN agency worker killed in the Gaza Strip since the Israeli offensive began on the Palestinian enclave. The deaths of three Britons, an Australian, a Pole and a Canadian-American have been confirmed in an Israeli attack on a convoy of the NGO World Central Kitchen on 1 April.