- UNRWA calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, saying people are living in ‘inhumane conditions’
GAZA: The World Food Programme (WFP) says despite its teams “doing everything” to deliver food assistance in Gaza, current supplies only meet 47 percent of the intended target, Al Jazeera reports.
According to the UN agency, around 500,000 people are now on the “brink of famine,” and only a ceasefire would allow food assistance to be scaled up to the required levels.
“Organized distributions and WFP-supported hot meals & bakeries can’t restart without far more aid,” it said in a post on X.
The UN agency for Palestine Refugees has called for a ceasefire in Gaza, saying people are living in “inhumane conditions.”
“Let’s not just watch and stand by,” UNRWA said in a post on X.
“It’s time for a ceasefire to end the suffering.”
Meanwhile, intense Israeli air strikes have been reported in four neighborhoods of Gaza City—Zeitoun, Sabra, Remal and Tuffah—as Israel’s military advances plans to take over the northern city and displace more than one million Palestinians to concentration zones in the south of the Strip.
The attacks come as the Palestinian Ministry of Health says 11 more Palestinians have died of starvation in the past 24 hours.
Palestinians injured by aid airdrops in southern Gaza: Medical source
Palestinians have been injured by aid dropped from planes in the al-Mawasi area southwest of Khan Younis, Al Jazeera Arabic reports. The number has yet to be confirmed.
Aid agencies have said repeatedly that airdrops cannot deliver enough food to tackle a deepening hunger crisis facing Gaza’s more than two million inhabitants. They said Israel needs to open land crossings so trucks can bring in aid.
Psychological trauma affects more than 1 million children in Gaza: health official
Munir al-Bursh, director general of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, has spoken to Al Jazeera about the humanitarian situation in the coastal enclave.
He says about 52 percent of medications are out of stock, and there is a severe shortage of blood bags.
“There are 44,000 orphaned children and more than a million children suffering psychological trauma in Gaza,” he adds.
UN staff slam ‘cruellest’ double standards in global response to Gaza
A group of UN staff members has launched a new campaign in support of Palestinians facing atrocities in Gaza, with the former UN assistant secretary-general for human rights, Andrew Gilmour, as their chair, Al Jazeera reports.
“The international response to Gaza since 2023 counts as the cruellest and most extreme example of double standards in my lifetime,” Gilmour said in a statement.
It has made “a mockery of international law” and dealt a “terrible blow to human rights globally,” he added.
Gilmour also highlighted his support for UN staff working in “unspeakable conditions” in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, where he said hundreds of UN staff have been killed by Israeli forces “in their homes or while carrying out their life-saving UN work”.
Jan Eliasson, a former UN deputy secretary-general and former foreign minister of Sweden, also expressed his support, saying the “initiative is a way to remember and pay tribute to 330 colleagues who were killed in the Gaza nightmare while serving the UN and the Palestinian people.”
