Gaza ‘hellish scenario’: UN says aid delivery grinds to halt as Israeli war rages

UN Humanitarian Coordinator has warned of a “hellish scenario” unfolding as the flow of aid in Gaza has come to a grinding halt, as a humanitarian crisis is unfolding in the besieged territory.

Lynn Hastings, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, said on Monday that conditions for aid delivery to the Strip are nonexistent.

“The conditions required to deliver aid to the people of Gaza do not exist,” she said, adding that the aid devilry is also complicated as two major roads in Gaza have been declared off-limits to UN teams and trucks.

According to Hastings, since the 7-day truce ended on Friday, the Israeli military has forced “tens of thousands... into increasingly compressed spaces, desperate to find food, water, shelter, and safety,” in southern Gaza.

Since the onset of the war nearly two months ago, the Israeli regime has ordered the forced evacuation of Palestinians to the south claiming that the southern part of Gaza is safe.

However, after the breach of the truce, Israel called the southern city of Khan Yunis “a dangerous combat zone,” telling the people there to move to the border city of Rafah or a coastal area in the southwest.

“If possible, an even more hellish scenario is about to unfold, one in which humanitarian operations may not be able to respond,” Hastings added.

She slammed the idea of “safe zones” urged upon Israel by the US government, where people are still unable to move about freely.

“Nowhere is safe in Gaza and there is nowhere left to go.”

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According to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) 1.9 million people, more than 80 percent of the population, have been internally displaced in Gaza since October 7 due to Israel’s unrelenting bombardment.

In a statement released on Monday, UNRWA said Israeli airstrikes were ongoing even where people are being forced to flee such as the border city of Rafah.

Hasting warned that today Gaza is a “textbook formula for epidemics and a public health disaster.”

“What we see today are shelters with no capacity, a health system on its knees, a lack of clean drinking water, no proper sanitation, and poor nutrition for people already mentally and physically exhausted.”

The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas says Israeli forces have directly bombed 14 hospitals. A few of the medical facilities in the Palestinian territory are now functional and they are inundated with thousands of the wounded.

According to the UN, only 5 percent of Gazans have access to drinking water. Aid agencies have warned that lack of access to clean and sanitary water would increase the risks of outbreaks such as cholera. 

Hastings is currently stationed in al-Quds, though Israel recently notified the UN that her visa will not be extended accusing her of lacking impartiality.

Israel unleashed the war on Gaza after Hamas launched Operation al-Aqsa Storm against the regime on October 7. Since then nearly 16,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of them women and children.

Nearly two months into Israel’s bloody onslaught on Gaza, the regime is wreaking havoc across every corner of the territory, leaving a trail of death and destruction also cutting off one of the most densely-populated places in the world from basic supplies such as water, electricity, medicines, and fuel leaving millions of Palestinians at risk of starvation.

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