UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said, “Gaza is being strangled, and it seems that the world has lost its humanity.” “There is not one drop of water, not one grain of wheat, not a liter of fuel that has been allowed into the Gaza Strip for the last eight days,” he added, raising the alarm on the dramatic situation.
During a press conference on Sunday, October 15, at UNRWA headquarters in East Jerusalem, he announced that “as of today, my UNRWA colleagues in Gaza are no longer able to provide humanitarian assistance.” He relayed the catastrophic situation in Gaza by saying “as I speak with you, Gaza is running out of water and electricity, and it is running out of life, and soon, I believe, there will be no food or medicine either.”
Lazzarini described the humanitarian situation as “an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe that is unfolding under our eyes,” adding that “the number of people seeking shelter in our schools and other UNRWA facilities in the south is absolutely overwhelming, and we do not have any more the capacity to deal with them. My team, who relocated to Rafah to sustain operations following the Israeli ultimatum, is working in the same building as thousands of desperate displaced people rationing also their food and water.”
He said that every hour, they receive more and more desperate calls for help from people across the Strip, and the UNRWA already lost 14 staff members. They were teachers, engineers, guards and psychologists, an engineer and a gynecologist.
“Most of our 13,000 UNRWA staff in the Gaza Strip are now displaced or out of their homes,” he added.
Lazzarini continued to describe the atrocity of the situation by saying that “Gaza is running out of body bags, thousands of people have been killed, including children and women. At least one million people were forced to flee their homes in one week alone. A river of people continues to flow south and at least 400,000 displaced persons are now in UNRWA schools and buildings, and most are not equipped as emergency shelters. No place is safe in Gaza.”
He announced that unless supplies arrive into Gaza, “UNRWA and aid workers will not be able to continue humanitarian operations.” “The UNRWA operations is the largest United Nations footprint in the Gaza Strip, and we are on the verge of collapse,” he further stated.
Lazzarini emphasized, “We keep reminding that International Humanitarian Law has to now be at the center of our concerns. Wars, all wars — even this war — have laws. The protection of the wounded and civilians, including humanitarian workers, is non-negotiable under humanitarian law.” He stated that “the attack and the taking of hostages are a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.”
Lazzarini said that the way the siege in Gaza is imposed is “nothing else than collective punishment,” adding that it “must be lifted before it is too late.” “Aid agencies must be able to safely bring in essential supplies such as fuel, water, food and medicine. And we need this now,” he stressed, calling on all parties to “facilitate a humanitarian corridor so we can reach all those in need of support.”
He concluded by saying, “Finally, we are also calling for a suspension of hostilities for humanitarian reasons, and this needs to take place without any delay if we want to spare loss of more lives.”
