Geneva — The head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency said on Tuesday its staff, doctors and humanitarian workers were fainting on duty in Gaza due to hunger and exhaustion.
The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestine Refugees said it had received dozens of emergency messages from its staff describing grave conditions and exhaustion in the enclave, where Israel has been fighting a war against Hamas since October 2023.
“No-one is spared: caretakers in Gaza are also in need of care. Doctors, nurses, journalists and humanitarians are hungry,” UNRWA commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini said in a statement, shared by his spokesperson in Geneva, Switzerland.
“Many are now fainting due to hunger and exhaustion while performing their duties [including] reporting atrocities or alleviating some of the suffering.”
Lazzarini also criticised a US-backed aid distribution scheme run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) that has been supplying aid since late May, when Israel, which controls supplies into Gaza, lifted an 11-week blockade.
Death trap
“The so-called ‘GHF’ distribution scheme is a sadistic death trap. Snipers open fire randomly on crowds as if they are given a licence to kill,” Lazzarini said.
The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies and largely bypasses a UN-led system, that Israel alleges has let Hamas-led militants loot aid shipments intended for civilians. Hamas denies the allegation.
More than 1,000 people have been reported killed while trying to receive food aid since the end of May, according to UNRWA estimates, Lazzarini said.
“UN has enough aid sitting in Gaza that they refuse to deliver and that could help end the desperation and help reduce or eliminate the violence around all aid distribution efforts if they would collaborate with us,” the GHF said.
Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN humanitarian office OCHA, said on Tuesday claims that the UN had stopped working were “manifestly incorrect”.
‘Unbearable’
The GHF also claimed that the “deadliest attacks” on aid distribution in Gaza have been linked to UN convoys.
At least 67 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire as they waited for UN aid trucks in northern Gaza on Sunday, the Gaza health ministry said, as Israel issued new evacuation orders for areas packed with displaced people.
The UN said on July 15 it had recorded at least 875 killings within the past six weeks at aid points in Gaza run by the GHF and convoys run by other relief groups. The majority of those killed were in the vicinity of GHF sites, while the remaining 201 were killed on the routes of other aid convoys.
The Israeli foreign ministry and its military aid co-ordination agency were not immediately available for comment.
Meanwhile, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday the images of civilians being killed in Gaza during humanitarian aid distributions were “unbearable” and reiterated the EU’s call for the safe and swift flow of humanitarian aid and respect for international law.
“Civilians cannot be targets. Never. The images from Gaza are unbearable. The EU reiterates its call for the free, safe and swift flow of humanitarian aid. And for the full respect of international and humanitarian law,” Von der Leyen wrote in a post on social media platform X.
“Israel must deliver on its pledges,” she added. Reuters
