UN warns starvation imminent in Gaza as aid halts again
UN aid deliveries to Gaza were suspended again on Friday due to shortages of fuel and a communications shutdown, deepening the misery of thousands of hungry and homeless Palestinians as Israeli troops battled Hamas fighters in the enclave. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said civilians faced the “immediate possibility of starvation” due to the lack of food supplies.
Nine Palestinians were killed and others injured in an Israeli strike that hit a group of displaced people near the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt – the transit point for aid.
WHO’s demand
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization called on Friday for a regular flow of patients to be allowed out of Gaza for treatment in Egypt, to relieve the pressure on overwhelmed hospitals.
WHO said a system needed to be set up to get priority cases out of the besieged Palestinian territory.
Twenty-five out of 36 hospitals in the strip are not functioning and the remainder are struggling to provide services.
“This is clearly not enough to support the endless needs arising due to the hostilities,” said Richard Peeperkorn, the WHO representative in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Israel has claimed its troops had found a tunnel shaft used by Hamas at Shifa Hospital in the north of the Gaza Strip.
The hospital, packed with patients and displaced people and struggling to keep operating, has become a major focus of global concern. Israel claims Hamas has stored weapons and ammunition and is holding hostages in a network of tunnels under hospitals like Shifa, using patients and people taking shelter there as human shields. Hamas denies this.
With the war about to enter its seventh week, there is no sign of any let-up despite international calls for a cease-fire or at least for humanitarian pauses.
The conflict was triggered by an attack by Hamas fighters on Oct. 7 killing 1,200 Israelis. More than 11,500 Palestinians, at least 4,700 of them children, have now been killed in Gaza.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), quoting Palestinian data, said Israeli attacks had destroyed or damaged at least 45% of Gaza’s housing units.
Trucks suspended
The UN said there would be no cross-border aid operation on Friday due to fuel shortages and a communication shutdown. For a second consecutive day on Thursday no aid trucks arrived in Gaza due to lack of fuel for distributing relief.
An Egyptian security source said three fuel trucks were ready to cross from Egypt into Gaza on Friday, but an aid official inside the enclave said there was no confirmation that more fuel would be brought in.
Nearly the entire Gazan population is in desperate need of food assistance, said WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain.
Water as ‘weapon of war’
The organization also said on Friday it was very worried about the spread of disease in Gaza, citing more than 70,000 reported cases of acute respiratory infections and over 44,000 cases of diarrhea, far more than expected.
Also, a UN expert said on Friday that Israel “must stop using water as a weapon of war” and allow clean water and fuel into Gaza to activate the water supply network before it is “too late”.
“Every hour that passes with Israel preventing the provision of safe drinking water in the Gaza Strip, in brazen breach of international law, puts Gazans at risk of dying of thirst and diseases,” Pedro Arrojo-Agudo said.
‘Policy of terror’
In the West Bank, UN figures show that daily Israeli settler attacks have more than doubled since the Hamas attacks. France on Thursday condemned violence by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, calling it a “policy of terror” aimed at displacing Palestinians and urging Israeli authorities to protect Palestinians from the violence.
“Concerning the West Bank, I’d like to express the strongest condemnation by France of the violence carried out by the settlers against the Palestinians,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Anne-Claire Legendre.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk echoed her words. Speaking in Geneva, Turk said he was deeply concerned about the intensification of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has asked Israel to take “urgent” steps to stop violence being carried out by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.