An Israeli airstrike killed a US Agency for International Development (USAID) contractor in Gaza last month, his colleagues said in a statement on Saturday.

The US development agency noted the death and urged greater protection for humanitarian workers in the fighting there.

Hani Jnena, 33, was killed November 5 along with his wife, their two-year-old and four-year-old daughters, and her family, the US-based humanitarian group Global Communities said.

An Internet technology worker, Jnena had fled his neighbourhood in Gaza City with his family to escape the airstrikes, only to be killed while sheltering with his in-laws, the group said. His employer was an on-the-ground partner for USAID, the US agency said. The Washington Post first reported the death.

In a final message to a colleague, Hani had written: “My daughters are terrified, and I am trying to keep them calm, but this bombing is terrifying”, Global Communities said.

It was a rare report of the killing of someone with US government ties in the more than two-month war between Israel and Hamas.

French worker dead

The French foreign ministry said one of its workers had died as a result of wounds sustained during an Israeli attack in Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip.

The man was seeking refuge in the house of a colleague from the French consulate alongside two other coworkers and a number of their family members, the ministry statement said.

“The house was hit by an Israeli air strike on Wednesday evening, which seriously hurt our agent and killed about 10 others,” it said, adding he had later died of his wounds.