The head of the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) says Israel continues to prevent humanitarian missions from reaching northern Gaza with crucial supplies including food and medicine.
“Hospitals have been hit and are without power, while the injured are left without care,” wrote Philippe Lazzarini on X.
He also said that Unrwa’s remaining shelters were so overcrowded that displaced people were “forced to live in the toilets”, and cited reports that people trying to flee were being killed.
The Israeli army has intensified a weeks-long offensive in parts of northern Gaza against what it said were Hamas fighters who had regrouped there. On Monday, residents and medics said Israeli forces were besieging hospitals and shelters for displaced people.
The Israeli military said it facilitated the evacuation of civilians and ensured hospitals remained operational as it “operated against terrorists and terrorist infrastructure.”
Doctors at the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza told Reuters that Israeli forces stormed a school and arrested the men before setting the building on fire.
Palestinian media also reported Monday that at least 10 people had been killed by Israeli artillery fire that hit a displaced persons camp at a school in the Jabalia refugee camp, a densely populated urban area north of Gaza City.
Graphic videos of the aftermath posted online by the Hamas-run Civil Protection Agency in Gaza and local journalists appeared to show at least four bodies, including a child and a woman, lying on the ground in a tent camp.
The Israeli military said it was checking the reports.
The Israeli military body responsible for managing the border crossings into Gaza, Cogat, also announced that 41 aid trucks and six fuel tankers had been transferred to the north over the past day, and that a UNICEF mission had been able to deliver polio vaccines to the north.
Cogat said there were also 600 trucks full of aid waiting to be picked up and distributed at various intersections, most of it by UN agencies.
The UN said no aid was allowed into northern Gaza during the first two weeks of October, when the Israeli army began its offensive in and around Jabalia.
The UN’s acting humanitarian chief said last week that a “trickle” of aid was being allowed through after the US warned Israel in a letter to urgently increase access within 30 days or risk some of the military aid being cut off. be discontinued.
On Monday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said it had been asking Israeli authorities for four days to gain access to the Falouja area in Jabalia but had been denied.
The OCHA also shared a video showing a call for help from a resident of Jabalia, who said he was among 32 people buried under a building destroyed by an airstrike on Friday.
“Eighteen of us got out. Fourteen people are still buried under the rubble, including small children. They are two, three and four year olds, as well as women. They are under the rubble. Alive. They begged me to save them, but I couldn’t,” Shamekh al-Dibes said.
Meanwhile, a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), who recently visited Gaza City, said the suffering for the estimated 400,000 people in the north was “unimaginable”.
“Intense fighting and evacuation orders are tearing communities apart. While some are desperate to leave, many, especially the elderly, sick and disabled, cannot leave. Others stay and believe that nowhere is safe,” Stephanie Eller said in a video.
“Hospitals are overwhelmed, with too many patients and a lack of fuel, electricity and water supplies,” she added. “People need food, water, medical care and, above all, a reprieve from the ongoing hostilities.”
Hadeel Obeid, the head nurse at the Indonesian hospital, also near Jabalia, said the water supply had been cut off and there was no food for the fourth day in a row. She also said the hospital needed permission from the Israeli army to operate the generator.
Israel launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, which killed around 1,200 people and took 251 others hostage.
More than 42,000 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.
