UN Rep Sobs in Interview Over Gaza Child Deaths

Chris Gunness: 'My heart is broken for those fragile lives'
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 31, 2014 11:14 AM CDT

After analyzing evidence of missile attacks on Palestinian shelters in the Gaza Strip, United Nations spokesman Chris Gunness appeared in a live television interview with al-Jazeera to discuss the "appalling" impact the Israel-Gaza conflict is having on human lives. "The rights of Palestinians—even their children—are wholesale denied," he said, in reference to some 20 people killed by an Israeli attack on a UN-run school, the Washington Post reports. As the interview neared a close, however, the toll of the conflict became too much for the former BBC reporter, who, after getting out a quick "my pleasure" to his interviewer, broke into sobs, the Telegraph reports.

The Post notes that the attack on the school marks the sixth time a UN Relief and Works Agency site has been hit during this campaign. Afterward, Gunness himself tweeted the interview, noting, "There r times when tears speak more eloquently than words. Mine pale into insignificance compared with #Gaza's." He continued, tweeting "My heart is broken for those fragile lives" and "The humanity of the children of #Gaza should humble & shame us all." In the latest from the conflict, Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas' tunnels "with or without a ceasefire." (More Israel and Palestinians stories.)

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