'Remember us': Palestine's UN envoy breaks down in tears at UNSC

Palestine's UN envoy Riyad Mansour moved to tears as he recalled words that a doctor from Medecins Sans Frontieres or MSF, Mahmoud Abu Nujaila, wrote at Gaza's Al Awda Hospital before Israel killed him in a missile strike in 2023.

Mansour told the UNSC on Friday that Nujaila had written on a hospital whiteboard used for planning surgeries: "Whoever stays until the end, will tell the story. We did what we could. Remember us."

Nujaila, according to the Front Line Defenders (FLD), an international human rights organisation founded in Dublin, was a Palestinian human rights defender, medical doctor, and humanitarian healthcare worker with Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF).

"During the 2023 Israeli hostilities in Gaza, he was on the front lines, treating the wounded and injured, risking his life in an extremely hostile situation," according to FLD.

On November 21, 2023, Nujaila was killed in an Israeli air strike on Al Awda Hospital, along with two other doctors and human rights defenders.

"He was in the facility treating patients when the third and fourth floors were targeted; the hospital was one of the last remaining partly functional hospitals in northern Gaza," according to FLD.

'Bring this hell to an end'

Mansour urged the Security Council to end the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza.

"It is our collective responsibility to bring this hell to an end. It is our collective responsibility to bring this genocide to an end," Mansour told a Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East.

"You have an obligation to save lives. Palestinian doctors and medical personnel took that mission to heart at the peril of their lives. They did not abandon the victims. Do not abandon them. End Israeli impunity. End the genocide. End this aggression immediately and unconditionally, now," Mansour told the council.

"They are fighting a battle they cannot win, and yet they are unwilling to surrender and to betray the oath they took," he said.

On Friday, several members of the UNSC expressed concern over Israeli invasions of the hospitals in Gaza.

"The deliberate targeting of hospitals medical personnel, patients and wounded defies every principle of humanitarian law and has no justification," Asim Iftikhar, Pakistan's envoy to the UN told the Council.

The meeting came following last week's imvasion on the Kamal Adwan Hospital and the arbitrary arrest and detention of its director, Hussam Abu Safiya.

Actual death toll higher than reported figures?

Israel's genocide in Gaza — now in its 456th day — has reportedly killed more than 45,658 Palestinians and wounded over 108,583 others. In neighbouring Lebanon, Israel has killed 4,048 people since October 2023 and continues to breach the November 27 truce deal.

Some 11,000 Palestinians are feared to be buried under the rubble of the bombed homes. Another 10,000 have been abducted by Israel and dumped in Israeli torture chambers.

Experts and some studies say this is just a tip of an iceberg and the actual Palestinian death toll could be around around 200,000.

Israel's war has caused widespread destruction and displaced about 90 percent of Gaza's population of 2.4 million, many of them multiple times. Winter has now arrived, and hundreds of thousands are sheltering in tents near the sea.

Israel is accused of carrying out genocide of Palestinians in Gaza at the International Court of Justice while the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for top Israeli leadership including PM Benjamin Netanyahu.