The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) called for a temporary truce to allow residents to leave the northern Gaza Strip, at a time when health officials say they are suffering from a lack of supplies needed to treat patients who were injured in the Israeli attack that has been ongoing for three weeks.
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said on Tuesday that the humanitarian situation has reached a terrible stage, noting that bodies are lying on the sides of the roads or buried under rubble.
Lazzarini added in a statement on the X platform, “People in northern Gaza are just waiting for death. They feel abandoned, lost hope and alone.”
“Our staff are reporting that they cannot find food, water or medical care, and the smell of death is everywhere, as bodies are left lying on the roads or under rubble,” he continued.
Lazzarini explained that missions to remove bodies or provide humanitarian assistance were rejected.
He continued, “I call for an immediate truce, even if it is for a few hours, to provide safe humanitarian passage for families who wish to leave the region and reach safer places.”
Lazzarini said that throughout the past year of the war in Gaza, some UNRWA employees remained in the north and did the impossible to provide assistance to the displaced.
He added, “We kept some of our shelters open despite the violent bombing and (Israeli) attacks on our buildings.”
Bodies in the streets
Yesterday, Monday, the UN agency – in a post on Ex – called on the Israeli authorities to allow it urgent access to northern Gaza, with the aim of carrying out rescue operations in Gaza, including retrieving those trapped under the rubble.
Health officials said – today, Tuesday – that the Israeli occupation forces killed more than 20 people.
Health officials and the Palestinian Civil Defense indicated that the bodies of dozens of people killed by the Israelis were scattered on the roads and under rubble.
They added that rescue teams were unable to reach the bodies due to continuing airstrikes.
For his part, Director General of the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Munir Al-Bursh, who is currently in northern Gaza, said, “There are many wounded people who were martyred in front of us, and we were unable to provide anything for them.”
Al-Barsh added in a statement, “We do not have coffins for the martyrs, and we appealed to the families to donate regular fabrics.”
On October 5, the Israeli army began unprecedented bombing operations on the camp, the town of Jabalia, and large areas in the northern Gaza Strip governorate, before announcing the next day the start of the invasion of these areas under the pretext of preventing the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) from regaining its power in the region, while Palestinians say Israel wants to occupy the area and displace its residents.
With broad American support, Israel has been waging a genocidal war on Gaza since October 7, 2023, which, as of Tuesday afternoon, left 143,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded – most of them children and women – and more than 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction and famine that killed dozens of children and the elderly, in one of the… The worst humanitarian disasters in the world.
