GENEVA: The United Nations warned Tuesday that Gaza was facing deepening hunger 50 days into a total Israeli blockade on all aid entering the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.
“Gaza has become a land of desperation,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, said on X.
“Hunger is spreading and deepening, deliberate and manmade.”
After 18 months of devastating war and an Israeli blockade on aid since March 2, the UN has warned of a dire humanitarian situation for the 2.4 million inhabitants of the Palestinian territory.
Israel has accused the Palestinian militant group of diverting aid, which Hamas denies.
The heads of 12 major aid organizations warned last Thursday that “famine is not just a risk, but likely rapidly unfolding in almost all parts” of the territory.
“You can see a clear tendency toward total disaster,” Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA told reporters in Geneva Tuesday.
“It is true that right now is probably the worst humanitarian situation we have seen throughout the war in Gaza.”
In his post on X, Lazzarini questioned “how much longer until hollow words of condemnation will translate into action to lift the siege, resume a ceasefire and save whatever is left of humanity?”
The UNRWA chief decried that two million people in Gaza, most of them women and children, “are undergoing collective punishment.”
“The wounded, sick and elderly are deprived of medical supplies and care,” he said, even as humanitarian organizations like UNRWA have thousands of trucks waiting with supplies that risk expiring.
“Humanitarian aid is being used as a bargaining chip and a weapon of war,” he charged.
“The siege must be lifted, supplies must flow in, the hostages must be released, the ceasefire must resume.”
Gaza ‘land of desperation’ after 50 days of total siege: UN
https://arab.news/jg3xe
Gaza ‘land of desperation’ after 50 days of total siege: UN
- UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini: ‘Hunger is spreading and deepening, deliberate and manmade’
- ‘Humanitarian aid is being used as a bargaining chip and a weapon of war’
Sudan militia advances could trigger new refugee exodus
- Most of the estimated 40,000 people that the UN says have been displaced by the latest violence in Kordofan — a region comprising of three states in central and southern Sudan — have sought refuge within the country, Grandi said
GENEVA: Advances by paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in Sudan could trigger another exodus across the country’s borders, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, has said.
The RSF took over Darfur’s city of El-Fashir in late October in one of its biggest gains of the 2-1/2-year war with Sudan’s army. This month, advances have continued eastward into the Kordofan region and they seized the country’s biggest oil field.
Most of the estimated 40,000 people that the UN says have been displaced by the latest violence in Kordofan — a region comprising of three states in central and southern Sudan — have sought refuge within the country, Grandi said, but that could change if violence spreads to a large city like El-Obeid.
BACKGROUND
The war has uprooted nearly 12 million people, including 4.3 million who have fled to Chad, South Sudan and elsewhere.
“If that were to be — not necessarily taken — but engulfed by the war, I am pretty sure we would see more exodus,” said Grandi from Port Sudan.
“We have to remain very alert in neighboring countries in case this happens,” he said.
Humanitarian workers lack resources to help those fleeing, many of whom have been raped, robbed or bereaved by the violence, said Grandi, who met with survivors who fled mass killings in El-Fashir.
“We are barely responding,” said Grandi, referring to a Sudan response plan, which is just a third funded largely due to Western donor cuts. UNHCR lacks resources to relocate Sudanese refugees from an unstable area along Chad’s border, he said.
Most of those who trekked hundreds of kilometers from El-Fashir and Kordofan to Sudan’s Al-Dabba camp on the banks of the Nile north of Khartoum — which Grandi visited last week — are women and children. Their husbands and sons were killed or conscripted along the way.
Some mothers said they disguised their sons as girls to protect them from being abducted by fighters, Grandi said.
“Even fleeing is difficult because people are continuously stopped by the militias,” he said.
