Tag: UN News

Some 613 people have died within facilities as a result since 7 October last year and more than 770 have been injured, according to latest data on healthcare attacks from the World Health Organization (WHO).

Condemning the continuing fighting and bombardment, WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said that the “ongoing reduction of humanitarian space plus the continuing attacks on healthcare are pushing the people of Gaza to breaking point”.

Children in the Gaza Strip face a deadly triple threat to their lives, as cases of diseases rise, nutrition plummets and the escalation in hostilities approaches its fourteenth week.

Thousands of children have already died from the violence, while living conditions for children continue to rapidly deteriorate, with increasing cases of diarrhea and rising food poverty among children, raising the risk of mounting child deaths.

Hundreds of facilities hit

WHO’s online platform covering attacks on healthcare indicated that more than 550 medical facilities and vehicles had been impacted in the almost 100 days since constant Israeli airstrikes began in Gaza.

The attacks have affected 94 healthcare sites including 26 hospitals damaged out of a total of 36 in the enclave.

‘Nightmare’ conditions for children: UNICEF

The head of the UN Children’s Fund UNICEFsaid in a statement on Friday that children in Gaza “are caught in a nightmare that worsens with every passing day”.

Catherine Russell noted young lives are “increasingly at risk from preventable diseases and lack of food and water. All children and civilians must be protected from violence and have access to basic services and supplies.”

Cases of diarrhoea in children under five rose from 48,000 to 71,000 in just one week starting 17 December, equivalent to 3,200 new cases of diarrhea per day.

She said the significant increase indicated child health in Gaza is “fast deteriorating”. Before the escalation in hostilities, an average of 2,000 cases of diarrhea in children under five were recorded per month.

Relief effort stymied

In a statement released by Eri Kaneko, Spokesperson for aid coordination office OCHA, humanitarians made clear on Thursday that the speed and volume of relief is being continually hampered by conditions on the ground.

“The UN and our humanitarian partners are committed to and continue to do all they can to meet the growing needs in Gaza. However, the operating environment and response capacity continues to be hindered by security risks, mobility constraints, delays and denials”, she said.

“Multiple inspections, long queues of trucks and difficulties at crossing points continue to hamper operations. Inside Gaza, aid operations face constant bombardments, with aid workers themselves killed and some convoys having been shot at.

She made clear other challenges include poor communications, damaged roads and delays at checkpoints.

“An effective aid operation in Gaza requires security, staff who can work in safety, logistical capacity and the resumption of commercial activity.”

142 UNRWA staff killed

Meanwhile, the UN agency providing help to Palestinians, UNRWA, said that the total number of staff killed since the beginning of hostilities stands at 142.

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees also reported that since 7 October last year, up to 1.9 million people have been displaced across the Gaza Strip, some multiple times.

This number represents over 85 per cent of the population of the Gaza Strip, UNRWA said, adding that families have been forced to move “repeatedly in search of safety”.

Nearly 1.4 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) now shelter in 155 UNRWA facilities across all five governorates of the Gaza Strip.

This figure includes 160,000 in the north and Gaza City according to data last revised shortly after the escalation began.

Another 500,000 people “are in close vicinity of these installations and receiving assistance” from UNRWA, the UN agency said in an update.

IOM launches $69 million appeal

The UN’s migration agency IOM launched an urgent appeal on Friday for $69 million to support its response to rising and critical humanitarian needs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

The appeal also covers neighbouring countries affected by the ongoing hostilities in Gaza.

In a statement, IOM said that hundreds of thousands of civilians need aid desperately. But getting help to them continues to be hampered by “long clearance procedures for humanitarian aid trucks at the border (and) the intense ground operation and fighting”.

“Frequent disruption” to communication networks has also prevented humanitarian aid coordination, the UN agency said “along with insecurity, blocked roads and scarcity of fuel”.

Outside Gaza, IOM noted that deteriorating security situation along border areas between Israel and Lebanon has forced some 76,000 people from their homes in southern Lebanon.

“A traumatized and exhausted population” is being “crammed into a smaller and smaller sliver of land,” UN emergency relief chief Martin Griffiths warned on social platform X on Friday.

But serious obstacles persist to bringing more aid to those in need amid relentless Israeli bombardment and intense fighting on the ground.

UN humanitarian affairs coordination office OCHA cited reports from Gaza’s health authorities that half of all the pregnant women seeking safety in shelters in the Strip suffer from thirst, malnutritionand a lack of health care, there is a lack of vaccinations for newborns and one in every two displaced children faces dehydration, malnutrition and disease.

Some 1.9 million Gazans, or 85 per cent of the enclave’s population, have been internally displaced since the start of Israel’s retaliation following Hamas’ deadly terror attacks in southern Israel on 7 October.

Dire overcrowding

According to OCHA, the latest wave of displacement was prompted by an intensification of hostilities in the southern town of Khan Younis and central Gaza’s Deir al Balah, as well as evacuation orders issued by the Israeli military.

Some 10 days ago Rafah was already estimated to be the most densely populated area in Gaza, exceeding 12,000 people per square kilometre, OCHA said, which is more than in New York City.

Aid access compromised

Despite a UN Security Council resolution adopted last week calling for a scale-up in aid deliveries to the enclave, access to people in need has remained overwhelmingly insufficient.

Only 76 trucks entered Gaza from Egypt through the Rafah crossing on Thursday, “well below the daily average of 500 truckloads (including fuel and private sector goods) that entered every working day prior to 7 October”, OCHA noted.

“You think getting aid into Gaza is easy? Think again,” the UN’s Mr. Griffiths wrote on X on Friday. He listed the impediments faced by humanitarians working to help people in the Strip, including “three layers of inspections before trucks can even enter”, insufficient entry points, “constant bombardment” and damaged roads.

“This is an impossible situation for the people of Gaza and for those trying to help them. The fighting must stop,” he insisted.

Last week UN chief António Guterres said that “an effective aid operation in Gaza requires security; staff who can work in safety; logistical capacity; and the resumption of commercial activity”.

“These four elements do not exist,” he concluded.

‘Race against time’ to bring food

Despite the challenges, humanitarians have continued doing their utmost to assist desperate Gazans. On Thursday the UN World Food Programme (WFP) distributed food parcels for 10,000 displaced families in makeshift camps in Rafah.

OCHA reported that some 200 community leaders were identified to collect assistance on behalf of surrounding families in their communities, with each parcel covering a family’s food needs for 10 days.

“Incredible to see the collab[oration] between the team and communities as we race against time to deliver life-saving food in Gaza,” WFP representative in Palestine Samer AbdelJaber wrote on social platform X.

The distribution was set to continue on Friday after time and safety constraints meant that only 45 per cent of people targeted with assistance were reached on the first day.

Last week, humanitarians warned that more than one in four households in Gaza were enduring “catastrophic” hunger. The risk of famine occurring in the Strip within the next six months was confirmed by the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, which showed that the entire population of Gaza, some 2.2 million people, is living with “crisis or worse” levels of acute food insecurity.

Locations in the north and south of the enclave were hit as Israeli ground forces also reportedly pushed into central areas, along with the firing of rockets by Palestinian armed groups into Israel, prompting concerns from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, about the safety of civilians uprooted time and again.

Rafah governorate in the southern Gaza Strip is now “bursting at the seams”, Director of UNRWA Affairs in Gaza Tom White said on X – formerly Twitter – late on Tuesday, his video post showing a long line of cars crawling forwards tail to bumper, laden with mattresses strapped down and other belongings.

Roads smashed

In its latest update on the crisis, UN aid coordination office OCHA said that Israeli forces had reportedly carried out “heavy” bombardment from air, land and sea “across most of the Gaza Strip, specifically the Middle Area” from 23 to 26 December.

This included “more than 50 strikes” from 24 to 25 December on three refugee camps – Al Bureij, An Nuseirat and Al Maghazi – that reportedly killed dozens and hindered the work of aid teams confronted by destroyed roads connecting the camps.

It has been more than 80 days since Israeli Defense Forces’ bombardment of the Strip began, in response to Hamas-led terror attacks in southern Israel, in which roughly 1,200 people were massacred and approximately 240 others were taken hostage.

The enclave’s health authority has reported that at least 20,915 Palestinians have been killed there since 7 October – including 858 people between last Saturday and Tuesday. “About 70 per cent of those killed are said to be women and children…Many people are missing, presumably buried under the rubble, with many still waiting for rescue or recovery.”

OCHA also reported that 164 Israeli soldiers have died with another 874 injured during ground operations in Gaza.

Renewed health fears

The development followed a new evacuation order issued by the Israeli Defense Forces impacting people living in Gaza’s middle area. At the same time, UNRWA Director of Communications Juliette Touma issued a fresh warning about the dire situation impacting people sheltering in tented camps in the south.

“You have 400 people sharing one toilet,” Ms. Touma said, echoing repeated concerns about disease spread linked to the lack of basic necessities including water, sanitation and food.

UN humanitarians have already described how hungry Gazans have stopped aid trucks en route to their destination to offload food, amid repeated warnings that it is becoming impossible to meet the needs of all those in the south, where population density is estimated at 12,000 people per square kilometre (about 7.5 miles).

World Health Organization (WHO) Emergency Medical Teams coordinator Sean Casey said that “100-plus patients” had been brought into Al-Aqsa Hospital on Monday in the space of 30 minutes, following reported blasts, including near Al-Maghazi refugee camp.

All of them needed urgent treatment for serious wounds, the WHO official told UN News, while “about 100” more lifeless bodies were brought into the hospital at around the same time.

Trapped under the rubble

The UN human rights office, OHCHR, also expressed deep concern on Tuesday at the ongoing “intense” bombing of central Gaza involving more than 50 strikes by the Israeli Defense Forces.

Attacks have killed more than 100 Palestinians since 24 December, OHCHR reported, adding that this was particularly concerning given that Israeli forces had “ordered residents from the south of Wadi Gaza to move to Middle Gaza and Tal al-Sultan in Rafah”.

Three refugee camps were hit, OHCHR spokesperson Seif Magango said in a statement, naming Al Bureij, Al-Nuseirat and Al-Maghazi. “Two strikes hit seven residential buildings in Al-Maghazi camp, killing an estimated 86 Palestinians and injuring many more,” he said. “An unknown number of people are still believed to be trapped under the rubble.”

Tedros ire

In a social media post on X (formerly Twitter), WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus condemned the “carnage” caused by Israeli airstrikes in retaliation for Hamas’s 7 October terror attacks on communities in southern Israel, in which some 1,200 people were slaughtered and another 240 taken hostage.

“WHO is extremely concerned about the unbearable strain that escalating hostilities are putting on the few hospitals across Gaza that remain open – with most of the health system decimated and brought to its knees,” the WHO chief said on Monday.

In a social media post, WHO’s Mr. Casey described the situation in Al-Aqsa Hospital as a “bloodbath”. He pointed to a boy of nine, Ahmed, who lay dying on the floor of the facility after sustaining terrible blast injuries as he crossed the street near Nuseirat.

‘It’s a bloodbath’

“We’ve seen children, women, young men, old men and women, people bleeding out,” he said, noting that patients could not easily be referred elsewhere for lifesaving treatment. “There’s blood everywhere in these hospitals at the moment. We’re seeing almost only trauma cases come through the door, and at a scale that’s quite difficult to believe. It’s a bloodbath as we said before, it’s carnage.”

The development follows a joint WHO and UN aid coordination office (OCHA) Christmas Day visit to Al-Aqsa Hospital to assess needs after strikes in Gaza’s central area at the weekend.

Although Al-Aqsa Hospital has medical supplies and fuel to run generators, Mr. Casey confirmed that the facility was taking in far more patients than its bed capacity and staff could handle, meaning that many injured patients would not survive the wait for treatment.

This situation was happening up and down the Gaza Strip, the WHO official continued, speaking from the UN Joint Humanitarian Operations Centre in Rafah in the south, that also doubles as a medical facility.

Fighting all night long

“There’s nowhere actually safe in Gaza,” he continued. “Right now in Rafah outside the door of this building, 50 metres from where I am sitting right now, there’s a camp of thousands of people who have been settled here…They’re in plastic shelters, plastic sheeting shelters right outside the door. And last night, we heard fighting almost all night long with reports coming in during the day today of many, many injuries presenting to the hospitals here in the south.”

Hospital capacity in Gaza is about 20 per cent of what it was before the 7 October escalation but “almost all” hospital services have stopped functioning, the WHO officer explained. “Either because the facilities themselves have been affected, because the staff have been forced to flee, because they’ve run out of power or they’ve run out of medical supplies, or staff have not been able to access them.”

Waiting to die

Providing an update about gravely ill patients in northern Gaza who he said previously were “waiting to die” in a church in the grounds of one hospital, Mr. Casey said that many were still “sleeping on pews” on Monday. The level of destruction “is so incredible, is so significant the roads are full of rubble”, he continued, highlighting the logistical difficulties of reaching the most vulnerable.

“We still need to do more to try to move these patients, but the options are becoming more and more limited as health facilities become less accessible, as health workers themselves are displaced,” he said.

According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, around 20,000 people are believed to have been killed in the latest escalation to date.

And in a related development, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that the number of Palestinian properties demolished and related displacement in the nearby occupied West Bank have reached record levels.

Latest data from OCHA indicates that 1,094 structures have been razed so far this year with 2,127 people uprooted, a record high matched only in 2016, when more than 1,500 people were displaced.