War in the Middle East
WFP: Supply for people in Gaza “no longer tenable”
People live in makeshift accommodation in the southern Gaza Strip. photo
© Rizek Abdeljawad/XinHua/dpa
According to UN Secretary-General Guterres, the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip has reached the limit. The deputy director of the World Food Program has now taken a look at the situation on site.
His team has reached more than a million people, “but the situation is untenable. We need our aid supplies and a humanitarian ceasefire,” Skau wrote after getting an idea of the catastrophic situation in Gaza on Friday. There is chaos and desperation, families are living on the streets.
Since only a fraction of the necessary food reaches the coastal area sealed off by Israel, there is a lack of fuel and no one is safe, “we cannot do our work,” Skau continued in a WFP statement. Thousands of desperate, starving people crowded the distribution points for humanitarian aid. There is confusion in the camps and the emergency shelters are overcrowded. The toilets are in a corresponding condition. In addition, every day in the background there is the dull thunder of the bombing raids, says Skau.
“Any meaningful humanitarian action impossible”
“Since law and order have collapsed, any meaningful humanitarian action is impossible,” said Skau, summing up his observations. People in Gaza lived in unhealthy conditions in shelters or on the streets as winter approached. “They are sick and don’t have enough to eat,” Skau complained.
“At a food distribution, a woman told me that she lives in an apartment with nine other families. They take turns sleeping at night because not everyone can lie down at the same time,” reports the WFP deputy director. In a cemetery he saw people cutting down trees to use as firewood.
The war was triggered by the worst massacre in Israel’s history, carried out by terrorists from the Islamist Hamas and other extremist groups on October 7th in Israel near the border with Gaza. As a result, more than 1,200 people were killed on the Israeli side, including at least 850 civilians. According to the latest figures from the Hamas-controlled health authority, almost 17,490 people have now been killed in Israel’s counterattacks. The number cannot currently be independently verified.