The UN humanitarian office today called on Israel to lift an apparent ban on food deliveries to northern Gaza from the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, claiming that people there are facing “cruel death by starvation”.
Israel announced on Monday that it would end cooperation with UNRWA in Gaza, accusing the aid agency of perpetuating the conflict. The agency said Israel had told it it would no longer approve its food convoys to northern Gaza. Four such requests have been rejected since March 21.
“That decision must be revoked,” OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke said at a UN briefing in Geneva.
“You cannot claim to comply with those international legal provisions when you block UNRWA food convoys,” he said.
UNRWA, which provides aid and services to Palestinian refugees in Gaza and across the region, has been in crisis since Israel accused a dozen of its staff members of involvement in the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. UNRWA has dismissed some staff members as a result and the allegations are under investigation.
A UN-backed report this month said famine is imminent and likely to hit northern Gaza in May.
James Elder, spokesman for the UN children’s agency UNICEF in Gaza, described seeing children “thin as paper” in a hospital in northern Gaza and incubators full of babies and malnourished mothers.
“Tens of thousands of people are crowding the streets,” he told the same briefing, describing his latest visit to the north on Monday.
“They give that universal hand-to-mouth signal, desperately asking and begging for food. Life-saving help is being hindered. Lives are being lost,” he said.
“I saw children whose malnutrition was so severe, skeletal,” he said.
Other aid agencies also deliver food packages to northern Gaza, although UNRWA claims to be the largest supplier.
Israel, which has vowed to destroy Hamas and is concerned the Palestinian group will divert aid, denies accusations by Egypt and UN aid agencies that it has delayed the delivery of aid, saying the UN has failed to distribute aid inside Gaza.
Photo: Anadolu Agency
