"Humanitarian situation is serious" UNRWA calls for a truce "even for a few hours" in northern Gaza

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has called for a temporary truce to allow residents to leave areas of northern Gaza, as health officials say they are running low on supplies to treat patients wounded in the three-week-old Israeli offensive.

UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said on Tuesday that the humanitarian situation had reached a dire stage, noting that bodies were lying on the sides of roads or buried under rubble.

“People in northern Gaza are just waiting to die, feeling abandoned, hopeless and alone,” Lazzarini added in a statement on the X platform.

"Our staff are reporting that they cannot find food, water or medical care, and the smell of death is everywhere, with bodies left lying on the roads or under the rubble," he continued.

Lazzarini explained that missions to remove bodies or provide humanitarian assistance were rejected.

"I call for an immediate truce, even if for a few hours, to provide a safe humanitarian corridor for families wishing to leave the area and reach safer places," he continued.

Lazzarini said that throughout the past year of war in Gaza, some UNRWA staff remained in the north and did everything they could to provide assistance to the displaced.

"We kept some of our shelters open despite the heavy shelling and (Israeli) attacks on our buildings," he added.

corpses in the streets

On Monday, the UN agency called on the Israeli authorities in a post on X to allow it urgent access to northern Gaza in order to carry out rescue operations in Gaza, including rescuing those trapped under the rubble.

Health officials said on Tuesday that Israeli occupation forces killed more than 20 people.

Health officials and Palestinian civil defense said the bodies of dozens of people killed by the Israelis lay scattered on roads and under rubble.

They added that rescue teams were unable to reach the bodies due to the ongoing airstrikes.

For his part, the Director General of the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Munir al-Barash, who is currently in northern Gaza, said, “There are many wounded who were martyred in front of us, and we were unable to provide them with anything.”

Al-Barsh added in a statement, "We do not have shrouds for the martyrs, and we appealed to the families to donate ordinary fabrics."

On October 5, the Israeli army began unprecedented bombing operations on the Jabalia camp and town and large areas in the northern Gaza Strip governorate, before announcing the start of the invasion of these areas the next day under the pretext of preventing the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) from regaining its strength in the region, while the Palestinians say that Israel wants to occupy the region and displace its residents.

With broad American support, Israel has been waging a genocidal war on Gaza since October 7, 2023, which has 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 has killed dozens of children and the elderly, in one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.

Source: Agencies