Gaza: UN aid team reaches stricken north, confirms 'shocking' disease and hunger.(Beit Lahia, Gaza)
| Published date | 25 March 2024 |
M2 PRESSWIRE-March 25, 2024-: Gaza: UN aid team reaches stricken north, confirms 'shocking' disease and hunger
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UN News - Global perspective Human stories | Middle East
The UN's top aid official in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Jamie McGoldrick, reached Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia on Thursday, where children with the most severe and life-threatening hunger are being treated at a new World Health Organization (WHO)-supported specialised feeding facility.
"Without swift treatment, these children are at imminent risk of death," UN aid coordination office, OCHA, said, in a call for all parties to the conflict to respect the laws of war and international humanitarian law. "Civilians and the infrastructure they rely on - including hospitals - must be protected," the UN agency insisted.
Fuel and medical supplies were delivered to Kamal Adwan hospital, "but aid is just a trickle", said the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA. "Food needs to reach the north NOW to avert famine," it said in a post on X.
In a related development, media reports indicated that the Israeli military raid at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City was continuing for a fifth straight day.
Al Shifa - which is Gaza's largest health centre - only recently restored "minimal" services, OCHA said, adding that "hostilities in and around the facility" have put patients, medical teams and treatment in jeopardy.
"People in Gaza - particularly in the north - are experiencing shocking levels of disease and hunger. We and our humanitarian partners continue to do everything we can to meet the overwhelming needs of the civilian population," OCHA insisted.Aid access woes
In a video on X, OCHA Head of Sub-Office in Gaza, Georgios Petropoulos, underscored the difficulties of accessing northern Gaza with food or medical supplies, because of ongoing aid constraints.
To reach the north from the south, aid teams have to pass through Israeli military checkpoints that cut the Strip in two.
"One of the biggest problems we have in Gaza is the inability to get between north and south Gaza," Mr; Petropoulos said, describing how on a recent mission finding 75 to 80-year-old man alone and "covered with dust", sitting down in the road. "We picked him up, we gave him some water, we put him in the back of our car and just drove him a few hundred metres up the road until we found a family of people that were on the street."
"We're calling on everyone to respect...
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