Gaza is ‘being strangled… and running out of life’, UN warns as fuel and food supplies dry up amid Israeli blockade
- Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have tried to escape northern Gaza
The “ghost of death” looms over Gaza, the UN warned yesterday as families continued to flee an expected Israeli invasion.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have tried to escape northern Gaza, where Israel has warned it will attack, despite fears that the unprecedented exodus is sparking a humanitarian catastrophe.
Supplies of food, water, fuel and medicine are running dangerously low after Israel imposed blockades on the Palestinian territory and aid convoys were banned from entering its southern border with Egypt.
The UN said it could no longer supply water to its shelters and warned: “Gaza is being strangled… Gaza is running out of life.”
Yesterday it was reported that Israel had reopened water supplies in southern Gaza after an intervention by US President Joe Biden.
Hospitals said they were at a critical point and that attempting to transfer the seriously ill and injured would amount to a “death sentence.”
As Israel’s war with Hamas entered its second week, the Palestinian death toll from airstrikes reached 2,670, including at least 700 children.
It means that, even before Israel’s imminent ground invasion, the death toll in Gaza is almost double the 1,400 killed in the Hamas raids that sparked the last crisis.
More than 9,000 people have been injured and up to 1,000 are feared trapped or missing under buildings destroyed by the airstrikes.
Hospitals said they were at a critical point and that trying to transfer the seriously injured and ill would be tantamount to a “death sentence.”
Humanitarian agencies warned that many more would die if aid and other supplies were not allowed into Gaza.
“The specter of death looms over Gaza,” said Martin Griffiths, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs. ‘Without water, without electricity, without food or medicine, thousands of people will die. Plain and simple.
UNRWA, the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees, said Gaza was facing an “unprecedented human catastrophe” and that Israel’s blockades meant it could no longer provide aid.
Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini said: “Gaza is being strangled and it seems that the war at this moment has lost its humanity.” The Israel Defense Forces have dropped leaflets in northern Gaza calling on residents to flee south through designated routes that they say they will not attack between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m.
More than 9,000 people have been injured and up to 1,000 are feared trapped or missing under buildings destroyed by the airstrikes.
But Gaza authorities claimed the airstrikes had hit a convoy of civilians on a supposedly safe evacuation route, killing 70 people. Israel’s military denied responsibility for Friday’s explosion and suggested Hamas was to blame.
Hospitals in northern Gaza reported that they had been overwhelmed by victims of the airstrikes and were without electricity or key medical supplies.
Videos posted online showed bodies wrapped in white cloth stored in empty ice cream freezer trucks after hospitals, morgues and cemeteries ran out of space.
Medical centers in the south reported that they had also been hit by airstrikes. The World Health Organization condemned the Israeli evacuation order as a “death sentence” for those receiving care who were too sick to be moved.
Doctors and nurses were risking their own lives to stay with their patients, authorities said.
The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope have called for greater protection for civilians caught up in the conflict.
