UNRWA calls for comprehensive ceasefire and assures aid cannot meet demand news

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees appeals (UNRWAToday, Wednesday, a comprehensive humanitarian ceasefire was reached in Syria. Gaza To meet humanitarian needs, a United Nations office warned that the volume of goods received was insufficient to meet the sector’s wide-ranging needs.

In a press statement today, UNRWA stressed the need to transform the temporary ceasefire in Gaza, which has been in place since last Friday, into a full humanitarian ceasefire to allow for the uninterrupted flow of humanitarian aid and commercial supplies into the Gaza Strip.

In a video posted on the UNRWA website, UNRWA Commissioner-General Filippo Lazzarini stressed the need to expand the scope of humanitarian action to meet the huge needs in the Gaza Strip.

Displacement and overcrowding

Lazzarini noted that 1.7 million Palestinians have been displaced to half of the Gaza Strip as a result of Israel’s war, “with more than a million of them seeking refuge in extremely overcrowded and unhygienic shelters.”

According to UNRWA, a convoy of trucks delivered humanitarian aid for the first time on Tuesday to the agency’s shelter in the northern Gaza Strip yesterday, where aid has been cut off for about 50 days.

“We need to open the Kerem Shalom crossing and other crossings to avoid disaster,” an UNRWA spokesperson told Al Jazeera.

He added that fuels were as important as medicines, explaining that civilian systems were on the verge of collapse.

He warned that aid was piling up on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, which can only accommodate 130 trucks.

Extensive damage

Thomas White, UNRWA’s director for Gaza, said: “The level of destruction in Gaza is severe, with buildings torn into pieces and piles of twisted metal, concrete and sheet iron everywhere.”

He added, “When we walked through Gaza City, it was like a ghost town. All the streets were deserted, the effects of heavy airstrikes and shelling were very visible, and the roads were full of potholes, which complicated the process of delivering aid.”

For its part, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian AffairsTo the United Nations (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) Although supplies entering Gaza have increased since the start of the humanitarian truce, the amounts received are not enough to meet the huge needs.

The UN office stressed the need for the immediate reopening of more crossings to deliver aid to Gaza, including the entry of commercial goods.

Losses and Impact

He pointed out that daily losses in agricultural production in Gaza amount to $1.6 million, and the losses are likely to be higher considering the destruction of agricultural equipment and farmland, as well as the damage to thousands of trees, especially olive trees.

He reported that since the start of the truce, the volume of cooking gas entering Gaza from Egypt (approximately 85 tons per day) was one-third of the average daily volume between January and August this year.

Affected by this, the queue in front of the Khan Younis gas station expanded and extended by about two kilometers, and people waited all night. Meanwhile, there were reports that residents were burning door and window frames for cooking. .

Starting from October 7th last year, Israel A devastating war in the Gaza Strip has caused massive infrastructure damage and tens of thousands of civilian casualties, mostly children and women, in addition to causing an unprecedented humanitarian disaster, according to official Palestinian and UN sources.