to report «iusnews»; The UN agency for Palestinian refugees is no longer able to provide shelter and protection to civilians under the UN flag, its Gaza Director Thomas White said on Friday.
Speaking in a video address from the besieged coastal territory, White said 38 people had died in UN facilities. At least 72 UNRWA staff have been also been killed, Al-Jazeera reported.
“The reality is we’ve lost contact with many of the shelters in the North,” White told member states gathered to listen to a report on the humanitarian situation.
Some 600,000 people in Gaza have been sheltering in UN buildings since the start of the war.
“These are people seeking shelter under a UN flag seeking protection under international humanitarian law,” White said, adding, “Let’s be very clear, there is no place that is safe in Gaza right now.”
White top aid official for Palestinian refugees in Gaza, has provided a sobering assessment of the water and food situation in the besieged enclave.
He said in a video briefing to diplomats that the average resident in Gaza is living on two pieces of Arabic bread a day and is increasingly desperate for water.
White said the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East is supporting about 89 bakeries in Gaza, but “now people are beyond looking for bread. It’s looking for water”.
White also said that, based on his extensive travel throughout Gaza in recent weeks, the enclave had become a “scene of death and destruction”.
Israel began allowing limited aid into Gaza on October 21 after earlier imposing a near-total blockade on the enclave, but inspections of incoming convoys have caused lengthy delays.
According to UNRWA, nearly 50 of its buildings and assets across Gaza have been impacted, with some being “directly hit”.
“This includes UN schools and buildings being used as shelters, where UNRWA is currently hosting around 700,000 people,” UNRWA said in a post on social media.
Israel waged the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Storm.
The death toll in Gaza since the start of Israeli aggression has exceeded 9,227 with more than 23,000 wounded, according to Gaza Health Ministry.
