Israel’s intensive military bombardment in retaliation to Hamas’ “Al Aqsa Flood” attack is causing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, warned Commissioner-General of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Philippe Lazzarini on Sunday.
“An unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding under our eyes,” Lazzarini stated in a press conference in East Jerusalem.
For the past eight days, Israel has enforced a complete blockade of Gaza, which had already been under blockade for the past 15 years. “Not one drop of water, not one grain of wheat, not a litre of fuel” is being allowed into the Gaza Strip, Lazzarini said.
Now running out of water and electricity, he said Gaza is being “strangled, and it seems that the world has lost its humanity right now.”
The Commissioner-General voiced concern over UNRWA’s inability to provide humanitarian assistance and its incapacity to deal with the surging number of people seeking shelter in the agency’s school and other facilities in South Gaza as 1 million people were forced to flee their homes in the north and go south after Israel’s warning to “leave now” before its intensive one-week bombing campaign.
Lazzarini affirmed that thousands of people have been killed in the last week, including children and women. “Entire families are being ripped apart,” he said. “Gaza is now even running out of body bags.”
UNRWA has lost 14 staff members including a teacher, an engineer, a guard, a gynecologist, and a psychologist, who died during Israeli airstrikes.
“No place is safe in Gaza,” he said. Yet more than 400,000 displaced Palestinians are seeking refuge in UNRWA schools and buildings that are not equipped as emergency shelters.
Lazzarini called for a suspension of hostilities “without any delay” for “humanitarian reasons.”