A high-ranking official in the UN informed international news agencies earlier on Monday that emergency aid operations had stopped completely in the Gaza Strip.
Later, the UN specified that the person in question indicated that it is the movement of emergency aid supplies and personnel that has stopped. Parts of the aid work carried out by employees of the United Nations Organization for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) continue.
– If aid workers are among a specific population in a specific area, and they have the tools to work, share and deliver, they will do it, says spokesman Stephane Dujarric to the press in New York on Monday.
– Where should we move now?
He emphasizes, however, that this amounts to “half a drop”. 15 places where the UN and aid organizations were based, as well as four UN warehouses, are affected by the latest evacuation order.
UNRWA confirms that it continues operations at at least eight primary health care centers and over 90 other health facilities. At the same time, the UN emergency aid office OCHA points out that the order in practice “turns upside down an entire life-saving humanitarian center that was established in Deir al-Balah after the evacuation from Rafah in May”.
– Where should we move now? asks the unnamed UN official, who adds that UN staff had to flee so quickly that equipment was left behind.
Hospitals are being emptied
Deir al-Balah also houses one of the last hospitals in Gaza still in operation, al-Aqsa Hospital. The Israeli army has not ordered the evacuation of the hospital itself, but it is located in the middle of the area covered by the latest order. Many patients and civilians who have sought refuge there have therefore fled.
They fear that the hospital will be caught in the fighting or attacked by Israeli soldiers.
Many fled on foot from the hospital and surrounding areas on Monday, journalists in Gaza report. Some wheeled patients on stretchers, while others carried sick children, mattresses, blankets or bags of clothes. One was carrying a teenager who was paralyzed in his legs and clinging to a bag of intravenous fluids.
– Where are we going to get medicine? Where should patients like myself go? Adliyeh al-Najjar asks as she rests outside the hospital gate.
Four schools in the area have also been evacuated.
Unable to deliver enough food
On Monday, the UN stated that it has only been able to deliver around half of the food needed to the population of Gaza in the last two months. The reason is Israeli restrictions, ongoing fighting and broken roads, according to the World Food Program (WFP).
The UN-backed initiative IPC said in June that there is a high risk of famine in the Gaza Strip, and that almost the entire population of 2.3 million Palestinians is affected by varying degrees of hunger.
Israel claims it is letting in unlimited amounts of emergency aid to Gaza and believes the UN is to blame for its failure to deliver it.
The Israeli army (IDF) has controlled all of Gaza’s border crossings since capturing the border crossing with Egypt in May. The so-called humanitarian zones that Israel declared at the start of the war are getting smaller and smaller.
Still more tents on the beach
Thousands of Palestinians have crowded together in tent camps along the beaches of the Mediterranean, where there is poor access to water and food. Diseases spread quickly, aid workers warn. Fresh satellite images from PlanetLabs, which the news agency AP has analysed, show that it is getting closer and closer between the tents.
So far in August, the IDF has issued 16 evacuation orders in the Gaza Strip, affecting around 258,000 residents, according to the UN. Five of them came last week, the highest number of orders in one week in the ten-month war.
Since the war broke out, only around 11 percent of Gaza has not been covered by such evacuation orders, the UN points out.
“A dangerous combat zone”
The IDF justifies the evacuation orders with the fact that Hamas and other militant Palestinians operate in the area and that civilians must flee to safety.
The latest evacuation orders for the Deir al-Balah area were issued late Sunday and have forced many Palestinians to flee again.
In a message on X, the IDF orders residents of certain areas to immediately go west, as the areas they are in “are to be considered a dangerous combat zone”.
– Our destiny is to die
It was an explosion 250 meters from al-Aqsa hospital on Sunday that triggered the panic and mass flight, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
– The result is that MSF is considering whether we should suspend wound treatment for the time being, while at the same time we will try to maintain life-saving treatment, says MSF on the X message service.
Of around 650 patients who were in the hospital before the evacuation order, only 100 remain, MSF adds, citing the Ministry of Health.
Fatimah al-Attar fought back tears as she left the hospital grounds and headed for the tent camps on Monday.
– Our destiny is to die. There is nowhere for us to go. There is no safe place, she told the AP news agency.
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2024-08-27 15:30:09
