 |
| nternally displaced Palestinians walk in the courtyard of a destroyed UNRWA school |
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) reports that over 50,000 children in the Gaza Strip urgently need medical treatment for severe malnutrition.
In a statement released on Saturday, the agency highlighted that “due to ongoing restrictions on humanitarian access, the people in Gaza are experiencing extreme levels of hunger. UNRWA teams are working tirelessly to provide aid to families, but the situation remains catastrophic.”
UNICEF spokesperson James Elder highlighted the immense challenges in both delivering and distributing aid across the war-torn Gaza Strip.
“More aid workers have been killed in this conflict than in any other since the establishment of the UN,” Elder told Al Jazeera.
On Wednesday, UNICEF undertook a mission to transport a truck loaded with nutritional and medical supplies for 10,000 children. The plan was to deliver the pre-approved aid from Deir el-Balah to Gaza City, a 40 km (25 miles) round trip.
“It took 13 hours, with eight of those spent at checkpoints, arguing over paperwork – ‘was it a truck or a van’,” Elder explained.
“Ultimately, the truck was denied access, and those 10,000 children did not receive the aid. As the occupying power, Israel has the legal responsibility to facilitate this aid.” The main land crossing in Rafah has been closed since Israeli forces took control early last month, increasing fears of famine in southern and central Gaza. UN’s World Food Programme Deputy Executive Director Carl Skau, who spent two days assessing the situation, stated that the challenges are “unprecedented.”
”The situation in southern Gaza is rapidly worsening. One million people are trapped without clean water or sanitation in a highly congested area along the beach in the scorching summer heat. We drove through rivers of sewage,” Skau reported. For months, right-wing Israelis have been protesting and blocking roads to prevent aid shipments from reaching Gaza, further hindering the flow of desperately needed aid.
On Friday, the United States imposed sanctions on a “violent extremist” Israeli group for obstructing and damaging humanitarian aid convoys to Gaza. The Group of Seven leaders also emphasized that UN agencies must operate unhindered in Gaza. UNRWA, which coordinates nearly all aid to Gaza, has been in crisis since January when Israel accused about a dozen of its 13,000 Gaza employees of involvement in the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
This accusation prompted many nations, including top donor the US, to abruptly suspend funding to the agency, jeopardizing its aid efforts.
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini has repeatedly condemned these funding suspensions as “additional collective punishment” for Palestinians already suffering from continuous Israeli bombardments.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment