The situation that is looming in the Gaza Strip is “even more hellish,” a UN official warned this Monday about the bombings that Israel is carrying out in the south of the territory and that could prevent the delivery of humanitarian aid to the population. .
Since hostilities resumed on December 1 following a seven-day truce, “Israeli military operations have expanded into southern Gaza, forcing tens of thousands more people to flee to increasingly concentrated spaces, with a need desperate for food, water, shelter and safety,” said Lynn Hastings, UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, in a statement.
“The necessary conditions do not exist to deliver aid to the population of Gaza. Although it may seem impossible, an even more infernal situation is about to unfold, to which humanitarian operations will not be able to respond,” he added.
“No one is safe in Gaza and there is nowhere left to go,” insisted the Canadian, who rejected the idea that, under these conditions, there are “safe zones” as the United States has evoked: zones that can be “neither safe nor humanitarian when declare unilaterally.”
“What we see today are shelters without space, a health system on its knees, lack of drinking water, no sanitation and insufficient food for a population that is mentally and physically exhausted: a perfect recipe for epidemics and a public health disaster,” described, lamenting the insufficiency of humanitarian aid and fuel being allowed into the Gaza Strip.
“The space allowed for the humanitarian response in Gaza is constantly reduced” with the closure to UN teams and trucks of two important roads that cross the territory, also denounced the UN official based in Jerusalem, whose visa will not be renewed by Israel, which has accused it of not being “impartial.”
The spokesman for the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, called this Monday again for a “durable humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza” and the release of all hostages, and urged Israeli forces to “avoid new actions that could exacerbate the already catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza and prevent further suffering for civilians.
The Israeli army tightened the siege on the southern Gaza Strip, where dozens of tanks entered on Monday as part of its offensive against the Palestinian Hamas movement, almost two months after the start of the war unleashed on October 7 by a bloody attack by the Islamist movement in Israel.
You can also read: ‘Hell on earth’: 184 dead reported in Gaza after end of truce
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