World Health Organization staff were handcuffed, stripped and interrogated at gunpoint after Israeli forces struck their residence three times and entered it during fighting in Deir al‑Balah, the UN health agency said.
Women and children were ordered to flee on foot through active combat, while six men were held; two WHO employees and two relatives were arrested, and one staffer remains in custody, according to the agency.
A day earlier, Israeli fire badly damaged the WHO’s main Gaza warehouse, igniting explosions and a blaze that left the building “non‑functional”, the statement said. Desperate crowds later looted the site, deepening shortages of medicine, fuel and equipment for some two million residents.
“Compromising WHO’s operations is crippling the entire health response in Gaza,” Director‑General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, urging an immediate ceasefire and the release of the detained worker.
Israeli tanks pushed into southern and eastern Deir al‑Balah for the first time on Monday, hunting for hostages, local officials said. Smoke rose over homes and mosques after shelling in the city, now crowded with displaced Palestinians after 21 months of war.
The Gaza health ministry said at least 130 Palestinians were killed and more than 1,000 wounded by Israeli strikes and gunfire across the enclave in the past 24 hours, one of the deadliest daily tolls in recent weeks.
Officials reported 18 starvation deaths in the previous day.
UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric noted that Israel had been given the coordinates of all WHO sites and said UN premises “are inviolable”. He added that Israel is obliged under international law to permit humanitarian relief.
British Health Secretary Wes Streeting called the assault on aid workers “intolerable”, while London’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy warned of further UK sanctions if Israel rejects a ceasefire.
Britain, France and 23 other Western‑aligned nations jointly declared on Monday, “The war in Gaza must end now”, faulting Israeli restrictions on aid and demanding the release of 50 remaining hostages held by Hamas.
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Source: BBC, Guardian, The Telegraph