The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) announced that Israel, which is preventing the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, is not allowing the delivery of medicine or the fuel needed to pump water to northern Gaza.
Israeli authorities have prevented shipments of medicine and fuel needed for the operation of clean water and wastewater systems from entering Gaza, OCHA said in a statement.
“The lack of fuel for water, waste disposal and hygiene increased the risk of health and environmental hazards, while the lack of medicines weakened the functionality of the six partially functioning hospitals,” they pointed out.
Since the beginning of January, only one of 19 aid shipments has been allowed to supply fuel and materials for water facilities in northern Gaza.
In the Gaza Strip, where humanitarian aid is blocked by Israeli forces, there is a shortage of basic necessities, as well as medicine and medical supplies, and there are great difficulties in treating the wounded.
Reports say thousands are dead under the rubble, civilian infrastructure is being destroyed by targeting hospitals and educational institutions where people are sheltering.
A report released by OCHA on January 12 stated that only three of the 21 humanitarian aid shipments planned north of the Gaza Strip were allowed through in the first 10 days of this year.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East (UNRWA) also announced that the situation in Gaza had deteriorated to an unprecedented level and called on the international community for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.
– Israel announced a “less intense” phase of the war, the number of dead exceeded 24,000–
Israel has announced that its operations against Hamas in southern Gaza will soon enter a less intense phase, after the militant group’s health ministry reported that the death toll in the territory exceeded 24,000.
More than 100 days after the start of the war, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has come under intense international pressure to end the fighting as civilian casualties mount and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza deepens.
At the same time, deadly violence in the occupied West Bank, exchanges of fire on Israel’s border with Lebanon and strikes by US forces against Iran-backed Yemeni rebels acting in solidarity with Hamas have raised fears of an escalation outside the Gaza Strip.
UN chief Antonio Guterres on Monday reiterated calls for an end to the fighting, saying: “We need an urgent humanitarian ceasefire to ensure that sufficient aid reaches where it is needed, to facilitate the release of hostages, to extinguish the flames of the wider areas of war – because the longer the conflict in Gaza lasts, the greater the risk of escalation and misjudgment.”
As of Monday night, at least 24,100 Palestinians, about 70 percent of whom are women, young children and teenagers, have been killed in the Gaza Strip by Israeli bombardment and a ground offensive, according to the Hamas government’s health ministry — a figure that would represent roughly one percent of the territory’s population.
Hamas’s press office said Tuesday morning that 78 more people were killed in Israeli strikes overnight.
The Israeli military also announced the death of another soldier in Gaza early Tuesday, bringing the total number of people killed since the ground invasion began to 189, AA writes.
