PARIS: Veteran aid worker Jean-Pierre Delomier said he has seen it all responding to conflicts and disasters worldwide over the decades, but the Gaza war is by far “the worst.”
Returning from an eight-day mission to the south of the besieged Palestinian territory, the deputy director of Handicap International — Humanity & Inclusion (HI) said he was still “stunned.”
He told AFP he had never seen such a combination of “bombardment of an extremely densely populated and closed-off area, and a near-complete lack of access for humanitarian aid.”
Deliveries into the Gaza Strip have been reduced substantially since the start of the latest Israeli military campaign in the territory, sparked by Palestinian militant group Hamas carrying out a deadly attack in Israel on October 7.
The United Nations has warned of looming famine, and calls have grown for the Israeli authorities to let in and ensure the safe delivery of desperately needed aid waiting in lorries on the Egyptian side of the border.
“I saw kilometers (miles) of trucks queueing on four lanes, all waiting to get into Gaza,” said 61-year-old Delomier.
Foreign governments have scrambled to parachute in pallets of supplies from airplanes in recent weeks, but aid workers have warned they only cover a tiny fraction of needs and the method is hugely expensive.
“Planes fly over to drop a few pallets, whereas just behind (the border) there are kilometers of pallets waiting that could just be let in,” he said, incensed.
The aid worker, who started his career in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s, said what he witnessed in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah was incomparable.
About 1.5 million of the territory’s 2.4 million residents have crammed into Rafah, squashed up against the closed Egyptian border, most after fleeing Israeli bombardment on other parts of the territory.
When food is available, restrictions make it extremely expensive.
And Israel air strikes have repeatedly hit the city.
Gazans, Delomier said, were caught in a “mousetrap, with only a trickle of aid — whereas all that is needed is right there next door — and bombardment.”
He said people sometimes tried to compare the situation in Gaza with the 1994 Rwanda genocide, the Syrian civil war since 2011, or even the ongoing conflict in Yemen.
But the crisis in Gaza “is the worst I have ever seen,” he said.
The territory has been under an Israeli blockade since 2007, when Hamas took control of it, prompting rights groups to say Gazans were trapped in an “open-air prison” even before the latest conflict.
Five months of war have ravaged the territory, and sparked unprecedented alarm among aid groups.
The latest Gaza war broke out after Hamas launched their attack on southern Israel, resulting in about 1,160 deaths, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
The militants also took around 250 hostages. Israel believes 99 of them remain alive in Gaza and that 31 have died.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 30,800 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory. HI says around 90 percent of those killed were civilians.
Delomier said he worked in Rafah with the constant buzz of Israeli drones overhead.
“There was artillery fire and then, especially the constant buzzing of drones. The whole time, day and night, a permanent background noise,” he said.
Further north, conditions are even more dire and some residents have been reduced to eating animal fodder.
The United Nations on Tuesday called on the international community to “flood” Gaza with aid, after reports children are dying of starvation there.
Delomier said he was still reeling from what he saw of the situation.
“In fact, I am outraged,” he said.
Veteran aid worker says Gaza crisis ‘worst’ of his career
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Veteran aid worker says Gaza crisis ‘worst’ of his career
- Returning from an eight-day mission to the south of the besieged Palestinian territory, the deputy director of HI, said he was still “stunned”
- “I saw kilometers (miles) of trucks queueing on four lanes, all waiting to get into Gaza,” said 61-year-old Delomier
Gaza’s living conditions worsen as strong winds and hypothermia kill 5
- Hundreds of tents and makeshift shelters were blown away or heavily damaged, the UN humanitarian office reported
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Strong winter winds collapsed walls onto flimsy tents for Palestinians displaced by war in Gaza, killing at least four people, hospital authorities said Tuesday.
Dangerous living conditions persist in Gaza after more than two years of devastating Israeli bombardment and aid shortfalls. A ceasefire has been in effect since Oct. 10. But aid groups say that Palestinians broadly lack the shelter necessary to withstand frequent winter storms.
The dead include two women, a girl and a man, according to Shifa Hospital, Gaza City’s largest, which received the bodies.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Tuesday a 1-year-old boy died of hypothermia overnight, while the spokesman for the UN’s children agency said over 100 children and teenagers have been killed by “military means” since the ceasefire began.
Meanwhile, Israel’s military said it exchanged fire Tuesday with six people spotted near its troops deployed in southern Gaza, killing at least two of them in western Rafah.
Family mourns relatives killed by wall collapse
Three members of the same family — 72-year-old Mohamed Hamouda, his 15-year-old granddaughter and his daughter-in-law — were killed when an 8-meter (26-foot) high wall collapsed onto their tent in a coastal area along the Mediterranean shore of Gaza City, Shifa Hospital said. At least five others were injured.
Their relatives on Tuesday began removing the rubble that had buried their loved ones and rebuilding the tent shelters for survivors.
“The world has allowed us to witness death in all its forms,” Bassel Hamouda said after the funeral. “It’s true the bombing may have temporarily stopped, but we have witnessed every conceivable cause of death in the world in the Gaza Strip.”
A second woman was killed when a wall fell on her tent in the western part of the city, Shifa Hospital said.
Hundreds of tents and makeshift shelters were blown away or heavily damaged, the UN humanitarian office reported.
The UN and its humanitarian partners were distributing tents, tarps, blankets and clothes as well as nutrition and hygiene items across Gaza, said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The majority of Palestinians live in makeshift tents since their homes were reduced to rubble during the war. When storms strike the territory, Palestinian rescue workers warn people against seeking shelter inside damaged buildings for fears of collapse. Aid groups say not enough shelter materials are entering Gaza during the truce.
In the central town of Zawaida, Associated Press footage showed inundated tents Tuesday morning, with people trying to rebuild their shelters.
Yasmin Shalha, a displaced woman from the northern town of Beit Lahiya, stood against winds that lifted the tarps of tents around her as she stitched hers back together with needle and thread. She said it had fallen on top of her family the night before, as they slept.
“The winds were very, very strong. The tent collapsed over us,” the mother of five told AP. “As you can see, our situation is dire.”
On the shore in southern Gaza, tents were swept into the Mediterranean. Families pulled what was left from the sea, while some built sand barriers to hold back rising water.
“The sea took our mattresses, our tents, our food and everything we owned,” Shaban Abu Ishaq said, as he dragged part of his tent out of the sea in the Muwasi area of Khan Younis.
Mohamed Al-Sawalha, a 72-year-old man from the northern refugee camp of Jabaliya, said the conditions most Palestinians in Gaza endure are barely livable.
“It doesn’t work neither in summer nor in winter,” he said of the tent. “We left behind houses and buildings (with) doors that could be opened and closed. Now we live in a tent. Even sheep don’t live like we do.”
Residents aren’t able to return to their homes in Israeli-controlled areas of the Gaza Strip.
Child death toll in Gaza rises
Gaza’s Health Ministry said the 1-year-old in the central town of Deir Al-Balah was the seventh fatality due to the cold conditions since winter started. Others included a baby just seven days old and a 4-year-old girl, whose deaths were announced Monday.
The ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, says more than 440 people were killed by Israeli fire and their bodies brought to hospitals since the ceasefire went into effect. The ministry maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts.
UNICEF spokesman James Elder said Tuesday at least 100 children under the age of 18 — 60 boys and 40 girls — have been killed since the truce began due to military operations, including drone strikes, airstrikes, tank shelling and use of live ammunition. Those figures, he said, reflect incidents where enough details have been compiled to warrant recording, but the total toll is expected to be higher. He said hundreds of children have been wounded.
While “bombings and shootings have slowed” during the ceasefire, they have not stopped, Elder told reporters at a UN briefing in Geneva by video from Gaza City. “So what the world now calls calm would be considered a crisis anywhere else,” he said.
Gaza’s population of more than 2 million people has been struggling to keep the cold weather and storms at bay while facing shortages of humanitarian aid and a lack of more substantial temporary housing, which is badly needed during the winter months. It’s the third winter since the war between Israel and Hamas started on Oct. 7, 2023, when militants stormed into southern Israel and killed around 1,200 people and abducted 251 others into Gaza.
Gaza’s Health Ministry says more than 71,400 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive.
