The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) cautioned on Monday that the limited number of supply trucks entering Gaza was insufficient to satisfy the territory’s ‘unprecedented humanitarian needs’.
“The handful of convoys being allowed through Rafah is nothing compared to the needs of over two million people trapped in Gaza”, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini told the UN Security Council, referring to Gaza’s only border crossing with Egypt.
According to Israeli officials, Israel has launched a huge bombing campaign against Hamas-run Gaza after militants rushed across the border on October 7, murdering 1,400 people, largely civilians, and taking 230 hostages.
The strikes have destroyed thousands of buildings and killed nearly 8,000 people, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
On Sunday, 33 trucks delivering water, food, and medical supplies entered Gaza through Rafah.
Prior to the war, over 500 trucks carrying aid and other products entered Gaza on a daily basis.
“The system in place to allow aid into Gaza is geared to fail unless there is the political will to make the flow of supplies meaningful, matching the unprecedented humanitarian needs”, Lazzarini said, urging the Security Council to demand an immediate humanitarian truce.
He said that 64 of his UNRWA colleagues had been killed in just over three weeks, claiming that it was the highest number of UN aid workers killed in a conflict in such a short time.
He went on to say that just hours before the meeting, a UN worker called Samir, as well as Samir’s wife and eight children, had been killed.
“My UNRWA colleagues are the only glimmer of hope for the entire Gaza Strip… but they are running out of fuel, water, food, and medicine and will soon be unable to operate”, claimed the Italian-Swiss diplomat.
“An entire population is being dehumanized”, he continued.
UNICEF’s Catherine Russell reminded the council that the true cost of this latest escalation will be measured in children’s lives — those lost to the violence and those forever changed by it.
The UN General Assembly passed a nonbinding resolution last week asking for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire, but the Security Council has yet to agree on any wording connected to the battle.
With permanent members Russia, China, and the United States vetoing previous resolutions, the Security Council’s ten elected members have begun work on a new text in the hopes of gaining unanimity.
“We have the means to get something done, and yet we repeatedly and shamefully fail”, said Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira, whose nation presently holds the rotating chair of the Security Council.
“The eyes of the world are staring at us and will not move away from our distressing inability to act”, he went on to say.
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