Senior Official Gives Eyewitness Account Of Israeli Shelling Of UN Gaza Compound
New York, Jan 15 2009 5:10PM
At about 10 a.m. local, the first Israeli shell, from a tank or artillery, crashed into the United Nations main centre
in Gaza City today, an hour after 700 Palestinians fleeing intense fighting crowded into the compound and UN officials
informed Israeli liaison officers of the dangers of shelling in the area and that shrapnel was coming into the
buildings.
“Before the direct strike, we were told, ‘yes we’ve registered that the shrapnel’s coming into your compound, we know
the dangers, we’ve informed the operational people on the ground, don’t worry, you won’t be hit’,” the Gaza Director of
Operations of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (<"http://www.un.org/unrwa/english.html">UNRWA), John Ging, told a news conference in New York, speaking by video link
from ground zero.
After the strike on the 20th day of the Israeli offensive launched with the stated aim of ending Hamas rocket attacks
into Israel, the Agency, which supplies aid to 750,000 Palestinian refugees in Gaza, half the total population,
redoubled its liaison efforts.
“We were highlighting that there were great dangers, particularly and noteworthy that we had five trucks full of fuel
ready since early morning to be dispatched to re-supply various centres and also water pumping stations and sewage
pumping stations and we alerted the Israeli Defence Forces of their exact location,” Mr. Ging said.
Within an hour there was a large explosion and fire erupted in the workshop area where the trucks were parked. As the
trucks were moved, six other rounds were fired into the same area and international staff identified them as burning
like phosphorous.
“It looked like phosphorous, it smelled like phosphorous and it burned like phosphorous, so that’s why I’m calling it
phosphorous,” Mr. Ging said, speaking 60 metres from the first explosion at the vocational training centre, and 150
metres from the second, voicing amazement that only three people were injured in both incidents.
“The place went up in flames. Our workshop was the part that was hit most severely. It went on fire, as did part of the
warehouse. Of course, we had to take cover until we got reassurances that there wouldn’t be further firing...There were
exploding petrol tanks in the garage itself,” he added, noting that the fire service took two hours to arrive because of
the fighting in the area.
“Unfortunately, it was too late to save the warehouse where we had hundreds of tons of food and medicine that were to be
dispatched today to our centres, the health centres and food centres.”
It took six hours to get the fire under control and it was still smouldering hours after that. Israel said it was
responding to Hamas fire from the vicinity of the UNRWA headquarters. Mr. Ging stressed that there were no militants in
or firing from the compound, calling for an independent investigation.
But he emphasized that the Israeli liaison officers with whom UNRWA works are “very sincere, very conscientious and very
hard-working” and were obviously passing on the details and trying to reassure the UN.
“It presents us with a new challenge,” he said of the shelling. “This was the hub of our operations, the nerve centre of
our operations… But of course we have to adapt to the new challenge and we’re opening up other warehouses outside the
compound so that we can keep the operation going…
“The bottom line is of course that the humanitarian plight of the people continues to necessitate our efforts here, we
have to keep going notwithstanding the dangers and the risks but also the new challenges that we face. I would put it to
you this way, that we had a first hand experience here today in this compound of what the poor people of Gaza have been
living with on a daily basis for the last 20 days and nights,” he added.
“So our appeal is not just for the safety of the UN staff and compounds and locations and convoys but even more
important, the civilian population, the innocent men, women and children who continue to die and be killed in this
conflict and injured in unacceptable numbers by any measure and of course the scale of destruction continues, you would
expect when built-up areas are subjected to artillery and tank fire.”
Mr. Ging said the video-conference with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who was in Jerusalem on an intensive diplomatic
mission to secure a ceasefire, was “a great morale booster” for all UN staff in Gaza.
“It’s hard to find the right words for the real awfulness of what is happening in Gaza currently,” UN Under-Secretary
General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes told the same news conference, voicing his
own “total sense of shock and dismay and outrage” at the UNRWA shelling. “It’s an absolute miracle that we don’t have a
huge casualty list from these hits.”
Giving an overview of the Gaza situation, Mr. Holmes said the casualty figures “continue to rise in truly horrifying
ways,” with the death toll reported by the Gazan Ministry of Health now standing at 1,086, of whom 346 were children and
79 women, and the injured at 4,790 – 1,709 of them children and 724 women.
On a comparable population scale that was the equivalent of having 33,000 people dead or injured in New York, or 1.2
million killed or wounded in the United States as a whole, he added.
Some 43,000 people had fled their homes to seek refuge in UNRWA schools and hundreds of thousands of others were likely
seeking shelter with relatives or friends in areas of the Gaza Strip less affected by the conflict.
On a more positive note, there was an improvement in aid crossing over from Israel into Gaza with 105 trucks getting in.
But that compared with 500 to 600 a day before Israel started imposing border closures in response to Hamas rocket
attacks. Israel also extended its daily lull for supplies to be distributed from three hours to four hours today, but
Mr. Holmes said that was still inadequate.
ENDS