A UN agency says one of its employees was killed when Israeli forces raided an aid warehouse in Rafah.

Israeli forces struck an aid warehouse in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, on Wednesday, killing at least one United Nations Relief and Works Agency worker and wounding 22 others, the organization said.

UNRWA is the largest aid agency on the ground in Gaza and the main lifeline for its 2.2 million residents, more than half of whom have been forced by Israeli military orders or fighting to settle in Rafah, on the southernmost edge of the enclave.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the agency, said in a statement that the “attack on one of the few remaining UNRWA distribution centers in the Gaza Strip comes at a time when food supplies are running low, hunger is widespread and is turning into famine in some areas.”

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The UNRWA facility, in eastern Rafah, serves as a warehouse for aid supplies and a food distribution center. No food was distributed to civilians on Wednesday, but more than 50 staff members were working at the facility when it was hit by Israeli forces around noon, said Juliette Touma, the agency’s communications director.

Photos and videos taken by Reuters photographers on the scene showed blood spatter in several locations around the facility: smeared on the floor of a warehouse, surrounded by piles of aid, soaked in the side of a box of infant medical supplies and on the ground outside collected.

According to the organization, at least 165 UNRWA personnel have been killed while working in Gaza since the war began. It also said that more than 400 people had died while sheltering in UNRWA facilities that had been collectively hit more than 150 times during the war.

Mr Lazzarini said that UNRWA shared the coordinates of all its facilities in Gaza daily with the “parties to the conflict”, and that the Israeli army had received the coordinates of the food distribution center on Tuesday, the day before. was it.

“Attacks on UN facilities, convoys and personnel have become commonplace, in blatant disregard for international humanitarian law,” Mr Lazzarini said.

Martin Griffiths, the United Nations’ top humanitarian chief, condemned the attack on the warehouse on social mediacalling it “devastating” for both first responders and “for the families they were trying to help.”

“They need to be protected,” he said. “This war must stop.”