GENEVA: The World Health Organization (WHO) pleaded with the Zionist entity on Wednesday to allow the WHO and other UN agencies access to deliver aid within the Gaza Strip, branding the humanitarian situation “indescribable”.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said its teams have had to cancel six planned missions to northern Gaza since Dec 26 “because our requests were rejected and assurances of safe passage were not provided”, while a mission planned for Wednesday was also called off.

“Delivering humanitarian aid in Gaza continues to face nearly insurmountable challenges,” he told a press conference. “Intense bombardment, restrictions on movement, fuel shortages, and interrupted communications make it impossible for WHO and our partners to reach those in need.

“We have the supplies, the teams and the plans in place. What we don’t have is access. We call on (the Zionist entity) to approve requests by WHO and other partners to deliver humanitarian aid.”

Tedros said only 15 hospitals in the Palestinian territory were functioning even partially, while the lack of clean water and sanitation, and overcrowded living conditions in the coastal strip were creating the ideal environment for diseases to spread. “People are standing in line for hours for a small amount of water, which may not be clean, or bread, which alone is not sufficiently nutritious,” he said.

WHO had warned this week its ability to provide aid and support struggling hospitals in war-ravaged Gaza was “shrinking”, despite international demands for more aid to be allowed in. WHO staff described desperate scenes of seriously injured patients, including young children, begging for food in hospitals — which have seen most of their health workers flee for their own safety.

“We’re seeing this humanitarian catastrophe unfold before our eyes,” Sean Casey, a WHO emergency medical teams coordinator, told reporters in Geneva via videolink from the Gaza Strip. “We’re seeing the health system collapse at a very rapid pace,” he warned.

The Zionist army has claimed the war is entering a new phase, involving troop reductions and more targeted operations in the territory’s center and south. But Casey said that on the ground, he had “not seen the lowering of the intensification”.

“What we are still seeing ... is a huge number of casualties related to hostilities, so shrapnel injuries, gunshot wounds, crush injuries from buildings that collapse. That’s still happening every single day.”

The Zionist entity’s relentless ground and air attack on Gaza has killed more than 23,200 people, mostly women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry. The entity claims the bombardment is aimed at destroying Hamas after the Palestinian resistance group attacked southern Zionist communities and military bases on Oct 7. Around 1,140 people, mostly civilians, died in the attack and subsequent Zionist military operation aimed at regaining control of communities targeted by Hamas.

‘Recipe for disaster’

The United Nations says the war has displaced around 85 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.4 million, and left civilians in the besieged Palestinian territory at risk of famine and disease. A UN Security Council resolution last month demanded that more aid be let in but the WHO said its access had only got worse.

The Zionist entity has implied the United Nations is largely to blame for the lack of aid reaching those in need in Gaza. But Casey insisted the WHO and other UN organizations were “constantly trying to reach the areas in greatest need”.

“Every day we line up our convoys, we wait for clearance (from the warring parties), and we don’t get it,” he said. “And then we come back and we do it again the next day.”

The agency has long described desperate scenes in the few barely functioning hospitals remaining in the north, facing severe shortages of food, clean water, medicines and fuel. And it warned that the situation was increasingly dire in the middle and south of the densely populated territory.

“Hostilities and evacuation orders in neighborhoods of the middle area and Khan Yunis ... are affecting access to hospitals for patients and ambulances, and making it incredibly complex for WHO to reach those hospitals to provide supplies and fuel,” said Richard Peeperkorn, WHO’s representative for the Palestinian territories. Speaking to journalists from Jerusalem, he warned that this “was a recipe for disaster and will make more hospitals non-functional”.

‘Must be protected’

The European Gaza Hospital, Nasser Medical Complex and Al-Aqsa hospital in the middle area, long among the best functioning facilities, are now near evacuation zones, Casey pointed out. “We cannot lose these health facilities,” he said. “They absolutely must be protected.”

He visited the Al-Aqsa hospital on Sunday, finding that hundreds of patients and around 70 percent of health workers had fled for safety amid increasing hostilities around the facility. The few remaining staff were struggling to care for patients lying on blood-streaked floors. “It was mostly children with gunshot wounds, with shrapnel injuries. Children who were playing in the streets when the building next to them exploded,” Casey said.