UN warns Gaza death toll will be ‘unimaginable’ if aid isn’t allowed in
www.standard.co.uk
'Gaza has already run out of body bags', the UN has warned

Link to archive of article. ‘Gaza has already run out of body bags’, the UN has warned. Body bags have run out in Gaza and the death toll will rise into a “disaster which can’t even be imagined”, the United Nations warned on Wednesday as pressure for access for humanitarian relief intensified.

Jenifer Austin, the deputy director of Gaza operations for the UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, said that its supplies of fuel and water will run out in eight days and that the million Palestinians who had fled their homes and moved south had created a “really, really difficult situation” with “100 per cent of refugees crammed into a third of the infrastructure”.

  • livusOP
    2•11 months ago

    From the article:

    Water is very scarce. If we can’t get the pipeline open for goods and fuel we are going to be facing an even worse situation,” she said.

    “There are trucks lined up across the Rafah border [with Egypt]. We need the border open, we need the goods to come in. If it doesn’t happen we are facing an even worse disaster which can’t even be imagined.

    “People will start dying. Gaza has already run out of body bags. There are so many deaths and the death toll will just keep rising.”

    The ongoing stalemate over aid today prompted a renewed appeal from the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” and for Israel to “immediately allow unrestricted access of humanitarian aid to respond to the most basic needs of the people of Gaza”.

    Meanwhile, Pope Francis used his weekly address at the Vatican to deplore the “desperate” situation in Gaza and urged the faithful to take “only one side” — “the side of peace”.

    The Israeli Defence Forces said, however, in a tweet that there is a “humanitarian zone” with aid available in Al-Mawasi in southern Gaza.