UNRWA chief warns agency may have to suspend all humanitarian activities due to lack of fuel.
The head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees has warned of a “deliberate attempt to strangle” its operations in the Gaza Strip and said it risks suspending all its humanitarian activities due to a lack of fuel.
Israel has refused to allow fuel deliveries to the enclave it has besieged, arguing they would be used by the Palestinian group Hamas for military purposes.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) supports more than 800,000 displaced people in Gaza. It risked having to completely suspend its operations, according to its general commissioner, Philippe Lazzarini.
“I believe there is a deliberate attempt to strangle our operations and to paralyze UNRWA operations,” Lazzarini said Thursday at a news conference in Geneva.
“For weeks we have been advocating warning about the impact of the lack of fuel,” he said, adding that in recent weeks the agency has been able to draw on remaining fuel reserves on the territory.
“But now we are running out,” he said. “We run the risk of having to suspend the entire humanitarian operation. »
Israel cut off fuel deliveries to the Gaza Strip as part of a “full siege” of the area after Hamas fighters from Gaza launched an attack on southern Israel on October 7, killing around 1 200 people, according to Israeli authorities.
Since the attack, Israel has bombed Palestinian territory, launched a ground offensive and severely restricted supplies of water, food and electricity. More than 11,600 people were killed in the Israeli attack, according to Palestinian authorities, including more than 4,700 children.
The first tanker truck to enter Gaza since Israel imposed the siege arrived on Wednesday.
UNRWA said it received 23,000 liters (6,075 gallons) of fuel. However, Israeli authorities have limited its use exclusively to transporting aid delivered from Egypt.
Lazzarini said 160,000 liters (42,000 gallons) per day are needed just to carry out basic humanitarian operations.
“I think it is scandalous that humanitarian agencies are reduced to begging for fuel,” he told reporters.
Lazzarini said humanitarian conditions have now seriously deteriorated, as 70 percent of the population in southern Gaza does not have access to clean water and sewage has started flowing into the streets.
Fuel is necessary for the operation of water desalination plants, sewage pumping system and bakeries.
Earlier on Thursday, Palestinian telecommunications companies Jawwal and Paltel announced that their network was out of service in Gaza because “all energy sources supporting it” were exhausted, plunging the enclave into a near-total communications blackout and hampering seriously the work of first responders and emergency services. services.
“This may cause or accelerate (the collapse of) the last remaining civil order in the Gaza Strip,” Lazzarini said of the outage, calling the scale of casualties and destruction in Gaza “simply staggering.” .
UNRWA said the telecommunications outage “makes it impossible to manage or coordinate humanitarian aid convoys.” It announced that its cross-border aid operations at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt – the only one open for aid deliveries – would be suspended on Friday.
From our📍#Gaza team @TomWhite:
There will be NO cross-border aid operation at the Rafah crossing tomorrow.
The communication network in #Gaza is broken down because there is NO fuel.
This makes it impossible to manage or coordinate humanitarian aid convoys. pic.twitter.com/Kaj8z0lE9f
– UNRWA (@UNRWA) November 16, 2023
Lazzarini said the fuel was used as a “weapon of war.”
“Today what we are saying is that if the fuel does not arrive, people will start dying because of the lack of fuel,” he said.