Residents of Gaza are dying before the eyes of the world… UN agencies raise alarm
With the ongoing war for about 4 months, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) warned on Saturday of an unprecedented catastrophe in the Gaza Strip, stating via its platform that the residents of the strip are “dying before the eyes of the world.”
Israel had accused several UNRWA employees days ago of involvement in a Hamas attack on the seventh of October last year, prompting UNRWA to terminate contracts of several accused employees and initiate an investigation.
Several countries, including the United States, Canada, and Australia, temporarily suspended their funding to the agency following Israeli accusations.
Meanwhile, the United Nations announced on Wednesday that the war had destroyed nearly half of the buildings in the Gaza Strip, rendering it “uninhabitable” and requiring tens of billions of dollars for reconstruction.
The UN organization warned that halting funding to UNRWA would have “catastrophic consequences” on the residents of the strip who are “dying of hunger,” according to the World Health Organization’s emergency operations director.
On Friday, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) stated that its estimates indicate that 17,000 children in Gaza have become orphaned or separated from their families during the conflict.
Jonathan Creek, communications director at UNICEF‘s office in the occupied Palestinian territories, stated that the children “show symptoms such as extremely high levels of continuous anxiety, loss of appetite. They cannot sleep, or they experience emotional outbursts or panic every time they hear the sound of bombing.”
He also noted that “prior to this war, UNICEF already considered that 500,000 children needed mental health services and psychosocial support in Gaza. Today, our estimates indicate that almost all children need this support, meaning more than a million children.”
The United Nations’ statements come at a time when Rafah witnesses a movement of displacement coming from Khan Younis, which is experiencing intensified Israeli campaigns.
More than 80% of the strip’s population has fled to the south, where they are crowded into unqualified camps or even in parks, roads, and streets, as UN estimates indicate that 1.9 million people, or about 85% of the population, have been forced to leave their homes.
The United Nations also warned of the deterioration of conditions in southern Gaza, particularly in Rafah, which it described as a “pressure cooker of despair,” now housing “more than half of the strip’s population,” while the World Health Organization expressed concern about the health situation and the risk of “famine” in the strip.
