UN spokesman cries on camera over Gaza school attack

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Chris Gunness, spokesman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, was being interviewed by al-Jazeera Arabic on Wednesday about the shelling of one of the organisation's schools in Gaza, in which at least 15 people died and scores were injured. The school was crammed with families who had fled their homes after warnings from the Israeli military to leave or be bombed. The interview was one of dozens Gunness gave on the incident.

Chris Gunness at the end of the al-Jazeera Arabic interview

“It was a live interview, and I just about got through it, just about held it together,” Gunness, 54, told the Guardian. “But what really makes my heart burst is the suffering of children, and I was so moved by the appalling attack on the school in Jabaliya that I couldn't control myself any longer.”

He added, “if my tears focus attention on the wholesale denial of human dignity in Gaza, then I have no regrets.”

“My tears pale into insignificance compared to those of the people in Gaza, who are suffering intolerably,” he said. “But we have now reached a point of such profound tragedy that tears are more eloquent than words.”



Published in the XReports.net, on August 1st, 2014