Belgian Foreign Minister Hajja Lahbib announced – early Friday – that she had summoned the Israeli ambassador to Belgium after raids destroyed the offices of the Belgian Development Agency (Annabel) in the Gaza Strip, stressing that targeting civilian buildings is unacceptable.
Through the X platform, Lahbib (of Algerian origin) indicated that the summoning of the Israeli ambassador to Belgium came to clarify the targeting of the Annabel agency building in Gaza by an Israeli raid.
For his part, Annabel Agency Director Jean Fan confirmed that the agency’s offices in Gaza were completely destroyed in an Israeli bombing that targeted them yesterday, Thursday.
He expressed his shock at the targeting of the agency’s building in Gaza, saying that the agency, as a government working for the public good within the framework of international humanitarian law, could not accept being bombed.
The Israeli embassy in Belgium has not yet responded to the statements of the Belgian Foreign Minister and Annabel.
It is noteworthy that the agency’s building is located in the Al-Rimal neighborhood in Gaza City in the middle of the Strip, which has been subjected to continuous Israeli artillery and air strikes since the start of the aggression against the besieged Strip on October 7.
According to the report of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), which was published last Wednesday, more than 37 thousand buildings, equivalent to 18% of the total buildings in the Gaza Strip, were damaged or destroyed in the Israeli aggression.
However, updated satellite data indicates that 50% of buildings in Gaza are destroyed or damaged, according to a co-author of the UNCTAD report.
