The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, warned this Monday that it will suspend its aid operations in Gaza within 48 hours. due to the lack of fuel in this Palestinian territory besieged and devastated by the fighting between Israel and Hamas.
“Humanitarian operations in Gaza will be paralyzed in the next 48 hours, as fuel is not allowed into Gaza,” said Thomas White, the director of UNRWA, on the social network X, formerly known as Twitter.
“This morning, two of our main water distribution subcontractors stopped working – they no longer have fuel – which will leave 200,000 people without drinking water” in the small territory, where more than half of the 2.4 million inhabitants are displaced and totally dependent on humanitarian aid to survive, he added.
UNRWA also reported that one of its premises in Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip where 1.5 million displaced people take refuge, suffered “significant damage” after “three direct attacks (…) by the Israeli navy” on Sunday.
“UN international employees present in Rafah left the building 90 minutes before the attack,” the agency said Monday, adding that “no casualties were recorded among these employees.”
(Also read: Hospital outlook in Gaza worsens: medical center closes due to lack of fuel)
UNRWA recalled that it provided both parties to the conflict with the exact location of all their infrastructure. The location of this building was provided twice, most recently on Friday.
“This attack demonstrates once again that there is no safe place in Gaza: neither the north, nor the center, nor the south,” the UN agency insisted, while the Israeli army orders Gazans to leave for the south, which it presents as safer.
(You can read: Arab countries ask for an end to the war in Gaza: ‘There will be no peace without a Palestinian State’)
In five weeks of Israeli attacks on the small Palestinian territory, UNRWA recorded “more than 60 cases of collateral damage or direct attacks inflictedits infrastructure, mainly schools that house thousands of civilians.
The agency states that “at least 66 displaced people have been killed and hundreds injured” in these bombings.
Serious situation in hospitals
This Monday, also, Thousands of Palestinians were waiting to leave Al Shifa hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, without water or electricity for days and in the midst of fighting between Hamas militiamen and Israeli army troops.
Nearing the fifth week of the war, triggered by a bloody Hamas attack on Israeli soil on October 7 that left some 1,200 dead – most of them civilians -, Bombing continued in the Gaza Strip, killing 11,180 people, including 4,609 children. according to the Ministry of Health of that territory.
The fighting is concentrated in the heart of Gaza City in the north of that territory, especially around some hospitals. which the Israeli army suspects are used to hide Hamas’ strategic infrastructure.
According to the UN, 1.5 of the 2.4 million Palestinians have been forced to leave their homes since the start of the war following the total siege imposed by Israel on October 9, which deprives that population of water, medicine, food and electricity.
(You can read: Anti-Semitism resurfaces after Hamas attacks on Israel: what is it and how to address it?)
Besides, The situation at the Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City remains complicated according to Mohammed Zaqout, director of the hospitals in that territory.
The patients “are on the streets without care” after the “forced evacuations” of two pediatric hospitals, Al Nasr and Al Rantissi, he explained.
Al Quds, another of the city’s hospitals, stopped operating on Sunday due to lack of fuel and electricity, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.
The Israeli army “ordered us to leave Al Quds hospital this morning,” Islam Chamallah told AFP on Sunday, after walking a dozen kilometers on foot with her daughter, her husband and her three other children in her arms.
According to the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 20 of the 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip are “out of service” due to lack of supplies.
The Hamas government, furthermore, He stated this Monday that all hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip are out of service.
The Israeli army, for its part, claimed to have “ensured” the passage of civilians from some health facilities, including the Al Chifa hospital, where 15,000 people are crowded, according to figures from Hamas and the Humanitarian Aid Coordination Office. from the ONU.
(Read on: Israel accepts four-hour-a-day ‘military pauses’ in northern Gaza, US says)
650 patients, about forty children in incubators, are in danger of death
But “(Israeli) tanks completely surround Al Chifa hospital,” Yusef Abu Rish, deputy health minister of the Gaza Strip, told AFP, adding that “650 patients, about forty children in incubators, all in danger of death.” They are in the hospital.
In a message on X (formerly Twitter), the director of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, He described the situation in the Al Shifa hospital as “serious and dangerous” after “three days without electricity or water.”
“The constant shootings and shelling in the surrounding areas are aggravating already difficult circumstances,” he added.
“The world cannot remain silent when hospitals, which should be havens of peace, become scenes of death, devastation and despair. Cease fire now,” he added.
AFP
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