Warning of famine and disease, U.N. agency chiefs say Gaza needs more aid, faster
RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Gaza urgently needs more aid or its desperate population will suffer widespread famine and disease, the heads of three major United Nations agencies warned Monday, as authorities in the enclave reported that the death toll in the Israel-Hamas war had surpassed 24,000.
While the U.N. agency chiefs did not directly point a finger at Israel, they said aid delivery was hobbled by the opening of too few border crossings, a slow vetting process for trucks and goods entering Gaza and continued fighting throughout the territory — all of which Israel plays a deciding factor in.
Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, sparked by the militant group’s Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, has prompted unprecedented destruction in the tiny coastal strip and triggered a humanitarian catastrophe that has displaced most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population and pushed more than a quarter into starvation, according to the U.N.
It has also stoked regional tensions, with Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen carrying out strikes in support of the Palestinians. A missile fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels hit an American-owned cargo ship on Monday, days after U.S.-led strikes against the group over its attacks on international shipping.
In Gaza, civilians have become desperate. Video shared online by Al Jazeera showed hundreds of people rushing toward what appeared to be an aid truck in what the news outlet said was Gaza City. The Associated Press could not independently verify the video, and it was not clear when it was filmed.
A day after the White House said it was time for Israel to scale back its military offensive, the World Food Program, UNICEF and the World Health Organization said new entry routes needed to be opened to Gaza, more trucks needed to be allowed in each day and aid workers and those seeking aid needed to be allowed to move around safely.
“People in Gaza risk dying of hunger just miles from trucks filled with food,” said WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain. “Every hour lost puts countless lives at risk.”
Palestinians seeking refuge in southern Gaza say every day has become a desperate struggle to find food, water, medicine and working bathrooms.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said U.N. agencies and their partners “cannot effectively deliver humanitarian aid while Gaza is under such heavy, widespread and unrelenting bombardment.” He said the deaths of 152 U.N. staffers in Gaza since the start of the war is “the largest single loss of life in the history of our organization.”
The Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said Monday that the bodies of 132 people killed in Israeli strikes were brought to Gaza hospitals over the last day, raising the death toll from the start of the war to 24,100.
The ministry, which does not distinguish between fighters and noncombatants in its tally, says two-thirds of those killed in the war were women and children. Israel says its forces have killed roughly 8,000 militants, without providing evidence.
On Monday, the Israeli military said its forces and aircraft targeted militants in the second-largest city, Khan Yunis, a current focus of the ground offensive, as well as in northern Gaza, where the military says it continues to expand its control. Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said attacks in southern Gaza will be scaled back once Israel takes military control of the area.
Security camera video from a West Bank village shows a young man standing in a central square when he is suddenly shot and drops to the ground.
In Israel, a woman was killed and 12 other people were wounded in a car-ramming and stabbing attack in a Tel Aviv suburb that police said was carried out by at least two Palestinians. They were later arrested. The police say the suspects stole three cars and attempted to run down pedestrians.
Hamas praised the attack, but neither it nor other Palestinian armed groups claimed responsibility for it.
Palestinians have carried out a number of attacks against Israelis since the start of the war, mainly in Jerusalem or the occupied West Bank. Around 350 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, mostly in confrontations during protests or Israeli arrest raids.
The war began Oct. 7, when a Hamas-led surprise attack into Israel killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The militants captured around 250 people and are still holding nearly half of them after releasing more than 100 in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel as part of a November cease-fire.
Hamas released a video late Monday showing three hostages — Noa Argamani, 26; Yossi Sharabi, 53; and Itay Svirsky, 38. It includes brief individual statements from all three, likely speaking under duress, in which they call on Israel to halt the war and say they have little food and water and are in danger from Israeli airstrikes.
Later in the video, Argamani says separate airstrikes killed Sharabi and Svirsky and that she herself was wounded. Footage then shows what appear to be the bodies of Sharabi and Svirsky.
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, said the army had told the families of Svirsky and another hostage that it was “very concerned” over whether they were still alive. He said Israel had struck a building near where the hostages were being held but did not know their location at the time.
The fighting, now in its 101st day, has set off an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which was already struggling from a lengthy blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt after Hamas took power in 2007.
The crisis has been especially severe in northern Gaza: The U.N. said Sunday that fewer than a quarter of aid convoys have reached their destinations in northern Gaza so far this month because Israeli authorities denied most access. Israeli officials had no immediate comment.
Palestinians in Jenin refugee camp, a center of West Bank resistance, say repeated Israeli raids appear intended to make their city as uninhabitable as Gaza.
The U.N. agencies said they want access to the Israeli port of Ashdod some 24 miles north of Gaza, which they say would allow larger amounts of aid to be shipped in and then sent directly to northern Gaza, much of which Israel leveled in the opening weeks of the war.
Israel has blamed the U.N. and other groups for the problems with aid delivery.
Moshe Tetro, an official with an Israeli military body in charge of civilian Palestinian affairs, said last week that aid delivery would be more streamlined if the U.N. provided more workers to receive and pack the supplies. He said that more trucks were needed to transfer the aid to Israel for security checks and that the working hours at the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt needed to be extended.
Israel sealed off Gaza after the Oct. 7 attack. It relented after its top ally, the U.S., pressed it to loosen its restrictions. The U.S. and the U.N. have continued to push Israel to ease the flow of aid.
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