More aid workers have been killed this year than in any year since tallies began, the UN humanitarian office said yesterday, with most of them killed in the Gaza conflict.
So far this year, there have been 281 aid worker victims, according to the Aid Worker Security database, which has recorded incidents dating back to 1997, versus 280 last year, which held the previous record.
It showed 178 had been killed in the occupied Palestinian territories, including Gaza, this year, which has been the deadliest conflict for the UN.
Photo: AFP
Twenty-five were killed in Sudan, the data showed.
“These people are doing God’s work, and they’re being killed in response. What the hell?” UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs spokesman Jens Laerke said at a Geneva press briefing.
Most of the victims were local staff, while 13 of them were international aid workers, he added.
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.
“This violence is unconscionable and devastating to aid operations,” UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher in a statement.
“States and parties to conflict must protect humanitarians, uphold international law, prosecute those responsible, and call time on this era of impunity,” he said.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
CYBERCRIME, TRAFFICKING: A ‘pattern of state failures’ allowed the billion-dollar industry to flourish, including failures to investigate human rights abuses, it said Human rights group Amnesty International yesterday accused Cambodia’s government of “deliberately ignoring” abuses by cybercrime gangs that have trafficked people from across the world, including children, into slavery at brutal scam compounds. The London-based group said in a report that it had identified 53 scam centers and dozens more suspected sites across the country, including in the Southeast Asian nation’s capital, Phnom Penh. The prison-like compounds were ringed by high fences with razor wire, guarded by armed men and staffed by trafficking victims forced to defraud people across the globe, with those inside subjected to punishments including shocks from electric batons, confinement
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
RSS