GG News Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, 31st Jan. World health Organization on Tuesday reiterated that this was not the time to abandon the people of Gaza as the Secretary General Antonio Guterres prepares to meet the representatives from donor countries who has suspended funds to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees after allegations against its several staffers of collusion with Hamas attacks in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
UNRWA is trying to provide lifesaving aid in Gaza to over 2 million civilians despite ongoing Israeli airstrikes in retaliation of Hamas-led attacks on 7 October that left some 1,200 dead in Israel and more than 250 hostages, .
OCHA cited Gaza health authorities that the war has killed 26,637 Palestinians in Gaza and left 65,387 injured. The Israeli military has reported 218 soldiers killed and 1,267 injured in Gaza.
UNRWA operates shelters for over 1 million people, providing food, water and healthcare services, also play the key role of facilitating the work of other UN and partner agencies there.
WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said “The shelters, the health centres and everything else is provided in Gaza through UNWRA”.
Mr. Lindmeier appealed to donors not to suspend funding to UNWRA “at this critical moment. Cutting off funding will only hurt the people of Gaza who desperately need support.”
US said on Friday it had suspended funding in response to allegations made against 12 UNRWA staffers who Israel says took part in the 7 October attacks. A full and urgent investigation is underway and some of the staff allegedly involved have been dismissed by the agency.
UN agencies said that many people in Gaza are on the verge of famine after 4 months of war.
Some have resorted to scouring aid convoys for food and supplies, including one on Tuesday morning in the southern city of Khan Younis.
Mr. Lindmeier said “We had a convoy just this morning trying to reach Nasser Hospital with patients, healthcare staff, everybody there needing food, but the very needy population already before basically took the supplies.”
The incident “shows how dire the needs are”, he told journalists in Geneva, warned that disease among Gaza’s malnourished population “can just spread like wildfire and that’s on top of the bombing and the shelling and the collapsing buildings”.
WHO official reported that the situation “has only gotten worse”, with “the shooting, the fighting the difficulty of access for people to reach Nasser or the difficulty of leaving” within Nasser Hospital.
UN aid coordination office OCHA warned that more people had been uprooted from their homes amid ongoing fighting and evacuation orders from the Israeli military.
“We’re in the midst of another wave of displacement in #Gaza, following eviction orders for large residential areas and amid intense hostilities,” OCHA said in a post on X.
“More people are killed or injured. The south is overcrowded and humanitarian access to the north is extremely limited,” it added.
