Briefing reporters in Geneva from central Gaza, UNRWA Senior emergency officer Louise Wateridge warned that as famine looms in the Gaza Strip and as winter approaches, displaced people are sleeping on the floor in makeshift shelters. surrounded by wastewater.
“We are extremely concerned when rain comes to the Gaza Strip. what will happen to the 500,000 people in the flood zone?” she said.
Ms Wateridge highlighted that the volume of aid currently flowing into the war-torn region was “the lowest in many months”, with an average of In October there were only 37 trucks per day for all 2.2 million people.
According to UNRWA, this represents only about 6% of commercial and humanitarian supplies permitted to be imported before the war.
US aid expires
Asked about the Tuesday deadline the United States set last month for Israel to improve its aid situation in the enclave by November 12, the UNRWA official said that instead, “aid supplies have decreased”.
The United Nations continues to be denied access to northern Gaza, where people are “begging for bread and water.”Ms Wateridge said, noting that 1.7 million people in the region – fully 80% of the population – did not receive their food rations in October.
Last Friday, food security experts from the United Nations-collaborated Integrated Phased Poverty Assessment Committee (IPC) give a warning about impending famine in the northern areas of the Gaza Strip.
As suffering continues to get worse, “people are losing hope,” Ms. Wateridge said.
Just this week, two missions to northern Gaza that she planned to participate in were rejected; The purpose is to provide chlorine tablets and evaluate facilities for those shelters.
“No one from UNRWA has been able to access the besieged north for more than a month,” she emphasized.
Every hour counts
The UNRWA official spoke of “pleas and testimonies” from UN colleagues and from doctors at hospitals in the north, which have been bombed. “The doctors informed us that they had run out of blood supply. They have run out of medicine… There are bodies on the streets,” she said, adding that ambulances had “stopped working” and people could only get to the hospital on their own by donkey carts.
“Colleagues are trapped in residential buildings” unable to leave, Ms. Wateridge said, while eight water wells operated by UNRWA in Jabalia in northern Gaza have all shut down, leaving residents without water. clean.
UNRWA’s senior emergency official reiterated the agency’s call to Israeli authorities to access besieged areasthat is “more and more important every hour Currently”.
Only a ceasefire will end the suffering
Late last month, the Israeli Parliament voted to ban UNRWA from operating in the country and ban officials from having any contact with the agency. This law will take effect 90 days after its passage.
Asked about any message UNRWA might send to Hamas, Ms Wateridge said: “Our call to Hamas as well as to Israeli forces is for a ceasefire.” She emphasized that the Palestinian militant group initiated “horrible attacks against Israeli civilians on October 7,” adding that it is unacceptable that the war continues and civilians suffer. unacceptable.
“We have seen the terrible suffering of Israeli civilians, the October 7 attacks, then the terrible suffering of civilians in the Gaza Strip. There needs to be a ceasefire, the release and return of the hostages and finally some respite for all civilians, not only in the Gaza Strip, but also in the surrounding area,” she concluded.
