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STORY: UN / OPT HUMANITARIAN
TRT: 03:49
SOURCE: UNIFEED
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGES: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 02 APRIL 2025, NEW YORK CITY / FILE
FILE – NEW YORK CITY
1. Wide shot, United Nations headquarters
02 APRIL 2025, NEW YORK CITY
1. Wide shot, press briefing room
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Jonathan Whittall, Head of Office for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, OCHA:
“I’ve recently with my colleagues coordinated a mission in Rafah that uncovered a mass grave of medics. Sounds shocking to say it, I can tell you it was shocking for us to experience. These were medical workers from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and the Civil Defense, still in their uniforms, still wearing gloves, they were killed while trying to save lives. They were being dispatched into Rafah as the Israeli forces were advancing into the area. The ambulances were hit one by one as they advanced, as they acted into Rafah. The graves they were buried in that we found them in was marked by the emergency lights from one of the ambulances that were crushed by Israeli forces around the area that we found this mass grave. The ambulances, the fire truck, a UN vehicle, had all been crushed. The bodies of those killed were buried in the grave.”
3. Med shot, spokesperson Farhan Haq at the rostrum
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Jonathan Whittall, Head of Office for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, OCHA:
“What is happening here defies decency, it defies humanity, it defies the law. It really is a war without limits. This case of our colleagues that were killed while trying to save lives is one horror in an endless parade from the past two weeks alone, we've had UN premises that have been shelled with tank fire, killing one of our colleagues and seriously injuring others. We've had international aid compounds and hospitals that have been hit. We've seen municipal workers that have been killed in humanitarian donated trucks. People have been bombed, food distribution points where aid workers have also been killed. Humanitarian warehouses have been damaged in strikes.”
5. Wide shot, press briefing room
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Jonathan Whittall, Head of Office for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, OCHA:
“And since the ceasefire collapsed two weeks ago, forced displacement orders are back. So in the last two days alone, we had around 100,000 people that have been displaced out of Rafah, many of them fleeing on the fire, but I saw some of them in the same mission that I described at the beginning, where we recovered the bodies of our colleagues from PRCs and civil defense, we saw people running towards us and being shot in their backs.”
7. Wide shot, press briefing room
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Jonathan Whittall, Head of Office for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, OCHA:
“As of today, 64 percent of Gaza is active forced displacement borders or falling within the so called Buffer Zone. It's 64 percent of Gaza that is today not accessible to the population, nowhere and no one is safe in Gaza. My colleagues tell me that they just want to die with their families. Their worst fear is to survive alone.”
9. Wide shot, press briefing room
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Jonathan Whittall, Head of Office for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, OCHA:
“And yet today, unfortunately marks one month without any suppliers entering into Gaza. That's one month of no food, no fuel, no aid, nothing has entered. So, 2.5 million people are trapped, bombed, starved, and the consequences are apparent to all of us that are here. It's mostly apparent to the people that are living through this far.”
11. Wide shot, journalists
"What is happening here defies decency, it defies humanity, it defies the law," a UN humanitarian official said Wednesday, describing mounting horrors in Gaza as a “war without limits.”
Briefing reporters in New York via video call, Jonathan Whittall, Head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, recounted a recent mission to Rafah, where he and colleagues uncovered a mass grave containing the bodies of medics. “These were medical workers from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and the Civil Defense, still in their uniforms, still wearing gloves, they were killed while trying to save lives,” he said. “The ambulances were hit one by one as they advanced, as they acted into Rafah.”
Whittall said the site was marked by crushed emergency vehicles, including a fire truck and a UN car. The incident, he said, was only one in a “parade” of horrors. In the past two weeks alone “UN premises have been shelled with tank fire, killing one of our colleagues and seriously injuring others. We've had international aid compounds and hospitals that have been hit,” he said. “People have been bombed at food distribution points where aid workers have also been killed.”
Since the collapse of a ceasefire two weeks ago, forced displacement has surged, Whittall said, with about 100,000 people fleeing Rafah in the past 48 hours alone - many under fire. “I saw some of them in the same mission that I described at the beginning... running towards us and being shot in their backs,” he said.
According to OCHA, 64 percent of Gaza is now under forced evacuation. “Nowhere and no one is safe in Gaza,” Whittall said. “My colleagues tell me that they just want to die with their families. Their worst fear is to survive alone.”
Whittall also spoke about a total aid blockade. “Today, unfortunately, marks one month without any supplies entering into Gaza,” he said. “That’s one month of no food, no fuel, no aid, nothing has entered. So, 2.5 million people are trapped, bombed, starved.”
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