La humanitarian response to Gaza is on the verge of collapse ”, warned the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in a press release.
“We must act urgently, failing which Gaza will sink even deeper into chaos from which no humanitarian effort can get it out”, plead the CICR.
Some 2.4 million people live in the narrow Palestinian territory in catastrophic conditions, after 18 months of a war, which left at least 52,500 dead, essentially civilian on the Palestinian side.
The Israeli authorities do not let any humanitarian aid in the avowed aim of forcing the Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the territory, to release the hostages it has still had since its attack on October 7 – 2023 in Israel.
According to the Israeli army, 58 are still retained in Gaza, 34 of which died.
“The blockade is fatal”
Since the start of the blockade, the United Nations has continued to alert the illegality of the measure with regard to international humanitarian law, but also to the real risk of famine.
The World Food Program (PAM) announced a week ago having distributed its “Latest food stocks” to the canteens and the 25 bakeries supported by the organization also closed their doors for lack of flour and fuel.
“Food stocks are now almost exhausted”added Olga Cherevko, spokesperson for the United Nations Humanitarian Agency (OCHA), during a video link from Gaza with journalists in Geneva.
“Community canteens have started to close and more and more people suffer from hunger”according to her, evoking information reporting on children and other very vulnerable people due to malnutrition.
“The blockade is fatal” and “access to water also becomes impossible”, warns the manager, who has been working in Gaza for 10 years.
She interrupts her intervention to explain that at the very moment when she speaks to the press, “Just at the bottom of this building, people are fighting to get water.”
“A tanker has just arrived, and people kill each other for water”, she described, also evoking this friend who told him a few days ago having seen “People burn … because of the explosions, and there was no water to save them”.
At the same time, Cherevko deplored that “Hospitals report a blood shortage while the victims continue to flock”.
“Gaza is in ruins, the streets are strewn with rubble … Often, the cries of freezing the wounded blood set off in heaven after the deafening noise of a new explosion”, tells the manager.
It also denounced massive trips, almost all of the Gaza population having been forced to move many times, to find a semblance of shelter or to respond to Israeli injunctions.
Since the brief ceasefire for a few weeks failed in mid-March“More than 420,000 people were again forced to flee, much with only their clothes on their backs, targeted, arriving in overcrowded shelters” While the bombings continue.
Pascal Hundt, Deputy Director of CICR operations, also warned that for civilians in Gaza, every day is a fierce struggle to survive the dangers of fighting and bear the consequences of incessant movements – all this without being able to count on emergency humanitarian aid.
The Director of Emergencies of the World Health Organization, Mike Ryan, qualified the situation in Gaza D’“abomination”.
“We break the body and mind of the children of Gaza. We embrace the children of Gaza, because if we do not act, we will be accomplices of what is happening before our eyes”he said Thursday at a press conference.
Cherevko nods, castigating the decision -makers who “Have looked at the endless scenes of bloody children, amputee members, of parents in mourning parades on their screens, months after month”.
“How much blood will still be necessary to pour before we say enough?”
