U.N. agency officials say they cannot do their jobs “in the face of overwhelming needs and continued violence.”
Top United Nations officials have demanded “an end to the terrible human suffering and humanitarian catastrophe” in the Gaza Strip, nearly a year after the start of the war between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas.
“These atrocities must stop,” they said in a statement Monday signed by the heads of U.N. agencies including the World Food Programme and the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), as well as other aid groups, as world leaders gathered in New York for the annual U.N. General Assembly.
“Humanitarians must have safe and unhindered access to people in need,” they said. “We cannot do our work in the face of overwhelming need and continued violence.”
The UN has long complained about the obstacles it faced in getting humanitarian aid into Gaza during the war and distributing it amid “total lawlessness” in the besieged Palestinian enclave. Nearly 300 aid workers, more than two-thirds of them UN employees, have been killed.
“The risk of famine persists, with the 2.1 million people still in urgent need of food and livelihood assistance, and humanitarian access remaining limited,” UN officials said.
“The health system has been decimated. More than 500 attacks on health facilities have been recorded in Gaza.”
At least 24 people were killed and 60 injured in Israeli military attacks over the past 24 hours, the enclave’s health ministry said in a statement on Monday.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, said the increasingly desperate conditions in Gaza were “the consequences of the intense bombing campaign.”
He added: “It is difficult to consider this a war because from the beginning it has been largely one-sided, dominated by the Israeli army, but we see it every day.”
The war in the Palestinian enclave began on October 7, 2023, after Hamas fighters stormed Israeli communities, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 250 captives to Hamas-controlled Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Since then, the Israeli army has razed swathes of the Palestinian enclave, killing more than 41,400 people, driving nearly the entire population from their homes and causing deadly hunger and disease, according to Palestinian health officials.