UNRWA appeals $2.8B aid for Gaza, West Bank as Rafah exodus reaches 360,000

Anjali Sharma

GG News Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, 14th May. UNRWA, said on Monday that 360,000 people have fled Rafah last week after the ongoing Israeli bombardment that has crippled humanitarian aid deliveries and is believed to have killed another UN aid worker.

UN agency said in a post on X, “Nearly 360,000 people have fled Rafah since the first evacuation order a week ago,” referencing leafleting by the Israeli military ordering those in eastern Rafah to leave their shelters.

UNRWA in alert, warned of ongoing “restricted humanitarian access” to and across the Gaza Strip that was now “a matter of life or death” for Gazans already suffering “relentless bombardments and food insecurity”.

The development came after Israel moved ahead with its military offensive in Rafah, seized control of the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing and Kerem Shalom crossing.

“We immediately and urgently need safe passage for humanitarian aid and workers,” the UN agency insisted, after fresh reports of more clashes and shelling in Jabalia refugee camp in the north of the enclave.

“Bombardments and other evacuation orders have created more displacement and fear for thousands of families” in the north, UNRWA said. “There’s nowhere to go. There’s NO safety without a ceasefire.”

UNRWA reported on Monday that another staff member had been killed in Gaza, bring the total number of staff killed in the war to 189.

The individual – a 53-year-old senior projects officer – was believed to have died in an Israeli strike in the central town of Deir Al Balah, after leaving Rafah. “He leaves behind a wife and four children,” the agency said.

UN highlighted its $2.8 billion appeal to support more than three million people in Gaza and the West Bank over the next eight months.

Joyce Msuya, Assistant-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator said “For months, women and children have been killed at a rate that exceeds any war in this century. And those who’ve escaped death and injury now risk losing their lives because of a lack of food, safe water, medicine and healthcare.”

Ms. Msuya described how every day, “scores of women give birth in horrifying conditions, often without anesthesia or medical aid, as bombs explode around them”.

“Mothers watch their babies die in their arms because they don’t have enough milk to keep them alive. And children are dying because they don’t have enough food or water.”

According to the Gaza health authorities, 70,000 more are wounded or missing, with many more trapped under the rubble. After more than seven months of war, at least 35,000 people have been killed,

OCHA senior official said that funding is needed urgently to help those who depend on humanitarian aid to survive insisted that “there is still much we can do given the right conditions”.

She noted: “We are in daily access negotiations with the parties. We are coordinating the humanitarian response. We have pulled people out of the rubble and repatriated the bodies of aid workers, including those working for World Central Kitchen and Médecins Sans Frontières who were killed serving those in need.”

OCHA reported new demolitions of Palestinian buildings in Al’Arrub Camp in the West Bank governorate of Hebron.

OCHA latest data online portal indicated that 435 structures have been damaged or destroyed across the West Bank so far this year, displacing 824 people.