The Gaza Strip has descended into anarchy, with increasing famine, widespread looting and increasing rapes in refugee camps, while public order has collapsed, United Nations officials said on Friday.
The magnitude of Palestinian suffering in Gaza “must truly be understood,” said Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN human rights office in the Palestinian Territories, after his latest visit to Gaza.
“I was particularly alarmed by the level of hunger,” Ajith Sunghay said at a news conference in Geneva, via videoconference from Amman.
“The breakdown of public order and security is exacerbating the situation, with widespread looting and fighting over scarce resources,” he testified.
“The anarchy in Gaza, which we raised the alarm about months ago, is here,” he said, stressing that the predictable situation could have been avoided.
A “horrible” situation
Ajith Sunghay said young women, many of whom have been repeatedly displaced, have reported a lack of safe spaces and privacy in their makeshift tents.
“Some say that cases of gender violence and rape, child abuse and other forms of violence in refugee camps have increased due to war and breakdown of law and order,” he added.
Ajith Sunghay described the situation in Gaza City as “horrible”, with thousands of displaced people sheltering in “inhumane conditions, with severe food shortages and terrible sanitary conditions”.
He said he saw, for the first time, dozens of women and children from Gaza sifting through the waste in the giant landfills.
The level of destruction in Gaza “is only getting worse,” he added. “Everyone I have met is asking for this situation to end,” he said.
“The killings must stop”
He said UN aid to the estimated 70,000 people still living in northern Gaza was being hampered by “repeated obstacles or rejections of humanitarian convoys by Israeli authorities.”
“It is absolutely obvious that massive humanitarian aid needs to arrive, and that is not the case,” he lamented.
The spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Jeremy Laurence, called for an immediate ceasefire. “The killings must stop,” he said. “The hostages must be released immediately and unconditionally. “People arbitrarily detained must be released.”
“Everything must be done to urgently provide all the food, medicine and life-saving aid that Gaza desperately needs,” he insisted.
The Hamas attack killed 1,207 people on the Israeli side, most of them civilians killed on October 7, 2023, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures and including hostages who died or were killed in captivity in the Gaza Strip.
Israel’s retaliatory war has killed 44,330 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas government’s Ministry of Health, considered reliable by the UN.
Source: BFM TV
