ShareKHAN YUNIS/GENEVA: Hundreds of families flocked to Gaza’s overwhelmed hospitals Tuesday seeking refuge from the seemingly endless Zionist army shelling as it builds up for a ground offensive. Gaza residents, who have been warned to get out of the north of the Palestinian territory, have packed courtyards and corridors in the hospitals that have been relatively unscathed from the Zionist assault that followed the October 7 attacks by Hamas. Amira, 44, and her children have moved to the courtyard of the Nasser hospital in the southern district of Khan Yunis. “Our bodies itch all over.
It has been a week since we could take a shower,” she told AFP as she prepared sandwiches for her children with some loaves she had been given. “Death might be more merciful,” she added. About one million people from northern Gaza have moved to Khan Yunis and other southern districts to avoid the looming Zionist ground offensive. More than 2,750 people have died in Zionist bombardments since the Hamas attacks which left 1,400 dead in the Zionist entity.
About 100,000 people are left in the northern district around Gaza City that the Zionist entity says is a Hamas stronghold and has warned will be the target of its assault. Conditions across the tiny territory are worsening every day for the 2.4 million population, according to aid agencies. UNICEF, the UN children’s agency, has said that unless water and fuel are sent “immediately”, Gaza inhabitants are in “imminent danger” of epidemics and death.
GAZA: Palestinians bake bread at a stall outside Al-Shifa hopsital in Gaza City on Oct 16, 2023.Food running short
The UN’s World Food Program said the food situation in the besieged and blockaded Gaza Strip was worsening, with only four or five days of stocks left in the shops. WFP said stocks were getting low in warehouses inside the Palestinian enclave, but at the shop level, the situation was even more acute. “The situation in Gaza is getting worse by the minute: the humanitarian situation but also of course the food security situation,” WFP’s Middle East spokeswoman Abeer Etefa, told reporters at the UN in Geneva via video-link from Cairo.
“The current stocks of essential food commodities are sufficient for only two weeks — and that’s at the wholesalers’ level,” she said, with the warehouses located in Gaza City in the north of the territory and shops having difficulties replenishing supplies. “Inside the shops, the stocks are getting close to less than a few days, maybe four or five days of food stocks left.” Etefa said that out of five flour mills in the Gaza Strip, only one was operating due to security concerns and the unavailability of fuel.
“So the bread supply is running low and people are lining up for hours to get bread,” she said. Only five bakeries out of 23 in Gaza contracted by WFP were still in operation, she added. “Our food supplies within Gaza are running really short,” said Etefa. The spokeswoman said there has been no looting of WFP warehouses, and “anyway, whatever we have left in the warehouses is so little”.
KHAN YUNIS: A Palestinian woman reacts as others rush to look for victims in the rubble of a building following a Zionist strike on Oct 17, 2023.Aid at Rafah crossing
Aid agencies have been flying supplies into El Arish airport in Egypt —around 20 kilometers away from the Rafah border crossing and the only one into the Gaza Strip not controlled by the Zionist occupation. So far Egypt has kept the crossing closed to aid going in or foreign nationals trying to flee, as the Zionist occupation has repeatedly struck the Palestinian side of the crossing. Etefa said the WFP had mobilized over 300 metric tons of food that was either at or on its way to the Rafah border crossing from Egypt into the Gaza Strip — enough food to feed around 250,000 people for one week.
“Everyone is still very hopeful that we will be able to get inside and this is why more supplies are on the way,” she said. “We call for unimpeded access, safe passage for desperately-needed humanitarian supplies into Gaza.” The UN’s humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths is due to arrive in Cairo on Tuesday on a visit to the region, expected to last several days, to negotiate aid access to the Gaza Strip.
He is set to go to the Zionist entity, and, if conditions permit, to the Palestinian territories, a spokesman said. The Zionist occupation has also cut power and water supplies to Gaza as part of its action. Gaza’s hospitals say they will struggle to keep operating and the human toll grows every hour. Hundreds of children are already among the dead and there are 10,000 injured, many packed into the six remaining hospitals. Shortages of medicines have added to the crisis caused by the lack of water and fuel to keep medical establishments running. — AFP
