Record 383 aid workers killed in global hotspots in 2024, nearly half in Gaza: UN
United Nations (AP): A record 383 aid workers were killed in global hotspots in 2024, nearly half of them in Gaza during the war between Israel and Hamas, the UN humanitarian office said Tuesday on the annual day honouring the thousands of people who step into crises to help others.
UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said the record number of killings must be a wake-up call to protect civilians caught in conflict and all those trying to help them.
“Attacks on this scale, with zero accountability, are a shameful indictment of international inaction and apathy,” Fletcher said in a statement on World Humanitarian Day.
“As the humanitarian community, we demand — again — that those with power and influence act for humanity, protect civilians and aid workers and hold perpetrators to account.”
The Aid Worker Security Database, which has compiled reports since 1997, said the number of killings rose from 293 in 2023 to 383 in 2024, including over 180 in Gaza.
Most of the aid workers killed were national staff serving their communities who were attacked while on the job or in their homes, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, known as OCHA.
So far this year, the figures show no sign of a reversal of the upward trend, OCHA said.
There were 599 major attacks affecting aid workers last year, a sharp increase from the 420 in 2023, the database's figures show. The attacks in 2024 also wounded 308 aid workers and saw 125 kidnapped and 45 detained.
There have been 245 major attacks in the past seven plus months, and 265 aid workers have been killed, according to the database.
One of the deadliest and most horrifying attacks this year took place in the southern Gaza city of Rafah when Israeli troops opened fire before dawn on March 23, killing 15 medics and emergency responders in clearly marked vehicles.
Troops bulldozed over the bodies along with their mangled vehicles, burying them in a mass grave. UN and rescue workers were only able to reach the site a week later.
“Even one attack against a humanitarian colleague is an attack on all of us and on the people we serve,” the UN's Fletcher said. “Violence against aid workers is not inevitable. It must end.”
According to the database, violence against aid workers increased in 21 countries in 2024 compared with the previous year, with government forces and affiliates the most common perpetrators.
The highest number of major attacks last year were in the Palestinian territories with 194, followed by Sudan with 64, South Sudan with 47, Nigeria with 31 and Congo with 27, the database reported.
As for killings, Sudan, where civil war is still raging, was second to Gaza and the West Bank with 60 aid workers losing their lives in 2024. That was more than double the 25 aid worker deaths in 2023.
Lebanon saw 20 aid workers killed compared with none in 2023. Ethiopia and Syria each had 14 killings, about double the number in 2023, and Ukraine had 13 aid workers killed in 2024, up from 6 in 2023, according to the database.
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Ambani, Adani pledge USD 210 bn for India's AI push
New Delhi (PTI): Conglomerates run by billionaires Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani committed USD 210 billion investment to creating infrastructure that will help India emerge as an AI development hub.
At the India AI Impact Summit, Ambani announced a Rs 10 lakh crore (about USD 110 billion) investment in artificial intelligence over the next seven years in gigawatt-scale AI-ready data centres in Jamnagar, leveraging up to 10 GW of green power surplus, and a nationwide edge-compute layer integrated with telecom and digital operator Jio's networks to deliver low-latency AI across India.
"Our resolve is clear: make intelligence as ubiquitous as connectivity," he said. "When compute becomes infrastructure, innovation will become inevitable."
Adani, on the other hand, unveiled a USD 100-billion investment to develop renewable-energy-powered, hyperscale AI-ready data centres by 2035 -- one of the world's largest integrated energy-compute commitments.
The initiative is expected to catalyse an additional USD 150 billion across server manufacturing, cloud platforms, and supporting industries, creating a projected USD 250 billion AI infrastructure ecosystem in India.
India must architect its own artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure rather than rely on imports, Adani Group executive director Jeet Adani said on Thursday, warning that AI will redefine national sovereignty.
Other major investments announced at the Summit included USD 50 billion commitment by Microsoft by the end of the decade to expand artificial intelligence access across the Global South. "India, not surprisingly, is one of the largest," its vice chair and president, Brad Smith, said.
The firm had unveiled USD 17.5 billion investment in AI investments in India last year.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced a new subsea cable initiative to boost AI connectivity between India, the US and other locations, alongside partnerships for cloud infrastructure platform support to over 20 million public servants across 800 districts.
Yotta Data Services, backed by a real estate group headed by Niranjan Hiranandani, announced over USD 2 billion spend on Nvidia's latest chips in an artificial intelligence computing hub it is setting up just outside the national capital.
While Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) signed up ChatGPT parent OpenAI as its first customer for its data centre unit under the global AI infrastructure initiative Stargate, infrastructure major Larsen & Toubro announced a proposed venture with Nvidia to build AI-ready data centre infrastructure, advanced computing platforms, and ecosystem enablement required to support large-scale AI workloads.
