Humanitarian aid has been practically paralyzed in Khan Yunis, where a large proportion of civilians from northern Gaza were forced to move through Israel and is now the focus of hostilities, the UN declared this Friday.
In its daily report on the conflict between Israel and the Islamist group Hamas, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says it can now only distribute aid in Rafah, on the southern tip of the Gaza Strip. along the border with Egypt.
“The central area of Gaza is practically disconnected from the south, due to the movement restrictions imposed by Israel on the main roads,” highlights the report, recalling that access to the north has been interrupted since the end of the truce, on December 1. . .
On Thursday, the only humanitarian aid that managed to reach the city of Khan Yunis, also in the southern Gaza Strip, was medical supplies from the World Health Organization (WHO) for the European Hospital and the Nasser Medical Complex, main health establishments in the city.
Only 14 of the 36 hospitals in the enclave continue to function and of them only two are in the north of the Gaza Strip, occupied by Israeli forces and where the fighting had been concentrated before the humanitarian pause agreed between the 24th and the 30th. of November.
The report states that one of the two hospitals still operating in the north, the Al-Awda Hospital Center in Jabalia (far north), was surrounded by the Israeli army and suffered damage due to shelling and Israeli sniper fire.
The WHO has so far documented 212 attacks on health facilities in Gaza and warned that the two main hospitals in the south of the enclave are operating at triple their capacity.
The report highlights that in the last 24 hours hundreds of men, some teenagers, were detained at a school in Beit Lahia (northern Gaza) where they had taken refuge and taken to an unknown location, accused by Israel of possible links to Hamas. . .
According to the UN, trucks with humanitarian aid continue to arrive in Gaza [69 na quinta-feira]but the possibility of managing these shipments by the United Nations is very difficult because many vehicles were blocked in the central area of the lane.
Frequent telecommunications outages and loss of contact with many UN agency staff also make it difficult to deliver aid, the report said.
The United Nations recalls that internally displaced persons in Gaza now number 1.9 million, around 85% of the total population of the Palestinian territory, including 1.2 million refugees in schools and other facilities of the United Nations Agency for Human Rights. Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).
Since December 3, tens of thousands of displaced people have arrived from Khan Younis and other areas to Rafah, a city in the far south, where overcrowded conditions, according to the UN, are “extreme” and where there is not even space for to camp. on streets or open areas.
“Thousands of people wait for hours at aid distribution centers, desperately needing food, water, shelter, health services and protection,” the UN said.
According to surveys conducted by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), 36% of families in Gaza suffer from severe hunger and 63% say they have gone entire days without food.
Source: TSF
