Geneva (Union)
Yesterday, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs confirmed that the Israeli army stopped a medical evacuation convoy in the city of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, and detained a paramedic.
The office added that the incident occurred while 24 patients were being evacuated from Al Amal Hospital in the city. The Israeli army has not yet issued a comment, but said it is verifying the details provided by the office.
Relief agencies and Palestinian officials say the hospital complex is under siege during the Israeli military offensive in Gaza.
Jens Laerke, spokesman for the office, told reporters in Geneva: “Despite prior coordination with the Israeli side regarding all employees and vehicles, Israeli forces disrupted a convoy led by the World Health Organization for several hours the moment it left the hospital” last Sunday. Laerke added: “The Israeli army forced patients and staff out of the ambulances and stripped all the paramedics naked.” He continued: “Three paramedics belonging to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society were later detained, despite their personal data being shared with Israeli forces in advance.”
He stated that one of the paramedics was later released, and called for the release of the other two, as well as all detained health workers.
Laerke said that Sunday's incident was not a passing incident in light of the shooting at aid convoys, the exposure of humanitarian workers to harassment, intimidation and detention, and the damage to humanitarian infrastructure.
Laerke said that Israeli forces “systematically” prevent access to Gazans who need assistance, which complicates the task of delivering aid to a war zone that is not subject to any law. He said that it has become almost impossible to carry out operations to evacuate the sick and wounded, and to deliver aid in northern Gaza, and the matter is also becoming more difficult in the southern Gaza Strip. In recent weeks, the Israeli authorities have prevented all aid convoys planned to be sent to the north. The last aid allowed in was on January 23, according to the World Health Organization.
What makes the situation more difficult is that even convoys that had been previously cleared and searched by Israeli authorities were repeatedly blocked or came under fire.
“The failure to provide adequate facilities for the delivery of aid throughout Gaza means that humanitarian workers are at unacceptable and avoidable risk of arrest, injury or worse,” Laerke said.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said that it would suspend its operations in Gaza for 48 hours, because Israel failed to guarantee the safety of its emergency medical teams.
Laerke said: The United Nations will continue to remind Israeli forces that they are obligated, at a minimum, to facilitate the “safe, smooth and rapid passage” of aid missions, when informed of it. The Israeli military campaign led to the killing of about 30,000 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to medical sources in the Strip. The situation is further deteriorating hopelessly in the densely populated sector.
Laerke said: UN aid trucks, which move without armed guards, are often stopped as soon as they cross into Gaza by crowds of people who are in dire need of food and other aid. “Desperate people take what they can,” he said. He added that it also appears that there are gangs seizing aid that is later offered on the black market, warning of “an increasing collapse of the civil order inside Gaza.”
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