12/11/2024
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12/11/2024
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UNITED NATIONS – The U.N. humanitarian office says 85% of its attempts to coordinate aid convoys and humanitarian visits to northern Gaza — where hunger is acute and Israel is carrying out a major offensive — were denied or impeded last month.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs made 98 requests to Israeli authorities for authorization to go through the checkpoint along Wadi Gaza but only 15 made it, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Monday.
The humanitarian office, known as OCHA, “is worried about the fate of Palestinians remaining in North Gaza, as the siege there continues, and urgently calls on Israel to open up the area to humanitarian operations at the scale needed, given the massive needs.” Dujarric said.
In a new report published Monday, OCHA said humanitarian organizations submitted 50 requests to the Israeli authorities to enter North Gaza governorate in October and 33 were rejected while eight were accepted but faced impediments including delays that prevented their completion, he said.
Over the past three days, Dujarric said, teams from OCHA, the U.N. human rights and de-mining agencies and other humanitarian groups visited nine sites in Gaza City to assess the needs of hundreds of displaced families, many from North Gaza.
The teams say that some were in shelters, abandoned homes, destroyed clinic and some were sleeping in the streets or open fields where they feared stray dogs at night, Dujarric said.
In a severely damaged structure, the team found more than a dozen families — including people with disabilities and some in urgent need of medical care — sheltering in the basement which had no electricity and was full of sewage, he said,.
“The assessment teams say that urgent assistance is needed, including medical treatment and essential medication,” Dujarric said. “Palestinians in Gaza city also need blankets, warm clothing, shoes, heaters, and fuel as winter approaches” as well as tarpaulins and flood-resistant tents.
