“” Doctors, nurses, journalists, humanitarian workers, including UNRWA The staff, hungry…Vanish due to hunger and exhaustion while exercising their tasks “,” said Juliette Touma, director of communications with the United Nations Agency for Refugees in Palestine, UNRWA.
Speaking of Amman, she pointed out that the search for food “has become as deadly as the bombing”.
Development intervenes as a United Nations Human Rights Office, Ohchrannounced Tuesday that more than 1,000 Palestinians were now killed by the Israeli army while he was trying to make food in Gaza since the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began to operate on May 27.
“As of July 21, we recorded 1,054 people killed in Gaza while trying to get food,” said spokesperson for the Ohchr Thameen al-Kheetan; “766 of them were killed in the vicinity of the GHF sites and 288 near the UN and other convoys of help from humanitarian organizations.”
Mr. Al-Kheetan noted that the conclusion came from “multiple reliable sources in the field, including medical teams, humanitarian organizations and human rights. It is still in the process of verifying our strict methodology. ”
The huts of the foundation are supported by the United States and the Israeli authorities and began to operate in southern Gaza on May 27, bypassing the UN and the other established NGOs.
Help relief is not a job for mercenaries
“The so-called GHF distribution program is a sadistic death screed,” said Touma of UNRWA. “The elite shooters open fire at random on the crowds, as if they were given a license to kill. »»
Quoting a declaration by UNRWA Head Philippe Lazzarini, Ms. Touma described the “massive hunting of people in total impunity” program.
“This cannot be our new standard. Humanitarian aid is not the work of mercenaries “,” She added.
UNRWA’s spokesman insisted that the UN and its humanitarian partners have the expertise, experience and resources available to provide safe, dignified and scale assistance.
“We have proven it repeatedly during the last cease-fire,” she said.
Living conditions in the band have reached a new level because the prices of basic products have increased by around 4,000%. For the inhabitants of Gaza who have lost their house and have been moved several times, they have no income and find themselves completely deprived of essentials.
A child expects food in Gaza.
$ 200 for a bag of flour
Ms. Touma underlined the testimony of a colleague on the field who had to walk for hours to buy a bag of lenses and flour, paying nearly $ 200 for that.
The United Nations World Food Program on Monday (Wfp) said a quarter of the Gaza population faces famine type conditions. Nearly 100,000 women and children suffer from acute serious malnutrition and need treatment as soon as possible.
Vital everyday items such as layers are rare and expensive, at around $ 3 each. Mothers resorted to the use of plastic bags instead, while a father “said he had to cut one of his last shirts to give his daughter sanitary pads,” said Touma.
“We, at UNRWA, have stocks of hygiene supplies, including layers for babies and for adults waiting outside the doors of Gaza,” said Touma, insisting that the agency has 6000 trucks loaded with food, drugs and hygiene supplies pending in Egypt and Jordan to be authorized to enter the Enclave.
Urgent ceasefire call
She reiterated UN calls to “an agreement that would bring a cease-fire, which would release hostages, which would cause a standard flow of humanitarian supplies to Gaza under the leadership of the United Nations, including UNRWA.”
Humanitarian operations in the enclave are pushed into a “constantly disputed space”, said the World Health Organization (WHO) Tarik Jašarević spokesperson.
The information journalists in Geneva sentenced three attacks on Monday in a building in the building which of the staff of Deir al-Balah, in the center of Gaza, as well as the “ill-treatment of those who are housed there and the destruction of his main warehouse”.
“The staff and their families, including the children, were exposed to a serious danger and traumatized after air strikes caused a fire and significant damage,” said Mr. Jašarević, adding that the Israeli soldiers entered the premises, “forcing women and children to evacuate” to the coastal shelter of Al Mawasi.
Detected under the threat of a weapon
The WHO spokesman said that the staff and family members were “bound, stripped, interviewed on the spot and projected under the threat of a weapon”. Two staff members and two family members were detained and while three were released later, a WHO staff member remains in detention for unknown reasons for the organization.
Jašarević called for the release of the detainee staff member and insisted that “no one should be held without accusations and without regular procedures”.
The last evacuation order for the region had an impact on several premises and compromised its presence on the ground, “paralyzing efforts to support a collapsed health system,” added Mr. Jašarević and “repel the more out of reach of more than two million people”.
On Monday, the Israeli military operation in Deir Al-Balah also caused an explosion and fire inside the warehouse of which is the principal, which is located in the evacuation zone of the central city of Gazan-“part of a systematic destruction model of health facilities,” said the agency spokesperson.
According to the Gaza health authorities, since the start of the war in October 2023, 1,500 health workers have been killed in the strip. Some 94% of all health establishments have been damaged and half of Gaza hospitals are “not at all functional,” said Jašarević.
“The possibility of preventing loss of lives and reversing immense damage to the health system is more out of reach every day,” he said.
Visa refusal
By highlighting other challenges in the humanitarian operation in Gaza, the WHO spokesman underlined an increase in the refusal of visas by the Israeli authorities for emergency medical teams seeking to enter the band since the last ceasefire between Israel and Hamas on March 18.
He said 58 international employees for emergency medical teams, including critical surgeons and doctors have been denied access.
Ms. Touma de l’UNRWA underlined the fact that since the agency’s general commissioner was denied the entrance to Gaza in March 2024, he was not authorized to return to the strip. He also did not receive a visa from Israel to enter the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, for more than a year.
UNRWA spokesperson also deplored the lack of access to international media at the enclave.
“It is certainly time, if not a long time, for international media to go precisely to Gaza to examine the facts and help report first-hand information on the horrors that the inhabitants of Gaza live,” she said.
Publicado anteriormente en Almouwatin.
