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Gazans ‘anxious and living in fear’ of Israeli assault on Rafah, warns top UN aid official
As international efforts continue to secure a ceasefire in Gaza, the head of UNRWA, the UN aid agency for Palestinians, warned on Tuesday that those in the enclave remain deeply traumatised by the war with Israel and afraid of a full-scale assault on Rafah in the south.
“People are anxious and in fear of a possible large-scale military operation,” Philippe Lazzarini said, after emerging from a briefing with Member States at UN Geneva. “If the assault takes place, the question is, ‘Where will the civilians go?’ There is absolutely no safe place in Rafah anymore and the fear is that the number of people killed and injured might again significantly increase.”
After more than four months of fighting, sparked by murderous Hamas-led attacks on 7 October in Israel that left some 1,200 people butchered and more than 250 taken hostage, more than 100,000 Gazans have been reported either killed, injured or are missing under the rubble by the local health authority, amid intense Israeli bombardment.
Mr. Lazzarini - who is UNRWA's Commissioner-General - insisted that it was unfeasible to expect the more than one million displaced people crammed into Rafah governorate to move once again, so that Israeli forces can continue their sweep for Hamas militants.
“They are asked to move, the question is where to move,” he said, noting that in Rafah, every spare piece of land over a 20-kilometre stretch was occupied by hundreds of thousands of people living in makeshift plastic shelters.
Turning to the issue of the serious allegations that some UNRWA staff collaborated with Hamas, the agency chief noted that he had immediately sacked those involved and initiated an investigation. Mr. Lazzarini also called for the cooperation of the Israeli authorities.
The UNRWA Commissioner-General also noted that the UN Secretary-General’s review would begin tomorrow into allegations against the agency regarding its “use of social media, about tunnels, about political affiliations” and how proactive it has been in responding to them.
The process will likely take two months but it should be accompanied by an inquiry, including into the Israeli military’s claim that a tunnel and data centre located 20 metres beneath UNRWA’s headquarters in Gaza City was used by Hamas, Mr. Lazzarini said.
“We need to look at all the situations where UN premises have been blatantly disrespected. Since the beginning of the war more than 150 of our installations have been hit. We know that some installations have been completely destroyed, hundreds of people have been killed, thousands have been injured and all this needs to be investigated independently, together with the allegation of a tunnel.”
Earlier, Israel’s Permanent Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Meirav Eilon Shahar, noted that her Government wished “no harm” to civilians in Gaza and that it did intend to cooperate with the investigation into UNRWA, although it “remained at war with the terrorist organization Hamas”.
“Our fight is with Hamas, it is not with the Palestinian people,” said the Ambassador, who also insisted that “there are alternatives to UNRWA” – a claim rejected by Mr. Lazzarini who said that it would be “shortsighted” to close the agency at a time when senior UN humanitarians and NGOs were calling for aid to be stepped up to Gaza.
“We have half a million girls and boys deeply traumatised that we urgently need to bring back into an education system,” the UNWRA chief said. This would not be provided by “an emerging local administration”, he insisted, adding that “there is absolutely no other UN agency” or NGO with the experience in providing government-like services, including education to hundreds of thousands of children.
“If we want to give a chance to any future transition to succeed, we need also to make sure that the international community has the tools, and one of these tools is UNRWA.”
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As world’s water reserves change, countries must prepare for a new reality: WMO
New data showing that rivers were at their lowest level for decades last year provides further evidence that the climate crisis is real and countries must act immediately to protect themselves from the increasing threat to communities and livelihoods, the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Thursday.
The key findings from WMO’s State of Global Water Resources 2025 report covering the hydrological cycle and extreme events in the five-year period to last year:
- 2025 was one of driest years for river discharge in 35 years
- Past seven years have seen abnorfmal river flows
- Water storage on Earth’s land surface has decreased in past decade
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Highlighting the long-term decline in the Earth’s freshwater storage and glacier melt, WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo explained that the planet’s water reserves used to act as a planetary “savings account” that absorbed the occasional dry season, avoiding a water crisis. “One of the central stories of the 2025 report is what is happening to that savings account? And the simple answer is that we are depleting it,” she told journalists in Geneva.
Groundwater reserves are equally stretched and have been in decline since 2014, WMO’s report states, with nearly two-thirds of monitored wells worldwide showing levels lower than the historical norm and indicating a shift “further toward deficit…not recovery”.
“At the same time, we are seeing more water-related disasters,” Ms. Saulo said, while also stressing that the currently strengthening El Niño “will increase the risk of drought in some areas, and flooding in others”.
Glaciers disappearing
In 2025, for the fourth consecutive year, every major glaciated region on Earth lost ice mass, leading to short-term hazards including floods and long-term water insecurity, according to WMO.
Responding to a question about whether the changing global water cycle might have contributed to the deadly Nepal-China flooding disaster, Ms. Saulo explained that melting ice and rock was just one factor in the chain of events that ultimately sent a massive and deadly wall of water and debris downstream on 26 August, killing at least 1,367 people.
“You asked if it could happen again? Absolutely; the problem in this region is that there’s 63,700 glaciers at the last count,” she told a Press Conference in Geneva. “Even if you’re looking with remote sensing with satellites at these glaciers, you might see some faults, you might see some slight shifting, that does not mean necessarily catastrophic collapse. So, in order to plan for this, it’s very, very difficult. But the international community is looking very hard at ways in which we can bring people together to solve some of these monitoring issues.”
Data indicates that glaciers shrank between 2023 and 2025 with cumulative losses of 1,400 gigatonnes of water – or about one third of annual fresh water needs.
Every major glacier region on Earth lost ice for the fourth consecutive year.
“All 19 glacier regions around the globe lost ice; in Central Asia, Iceland, the Russian Arctic and western Canada and the United States, it was among the three worst years on record,” said Wayne Jenkinson, WMO’s Director of Hydrology and Cryosphere.
Some regions with smaller glaciers such as Central Europe, the Caucasus, the western Canada and the United States may already have reached “peak water”, Mr. Jenkinson warned.
“After this point, the glacier gives less meltwater each year simply because there is less ice left to melt. That matters for every community downstream that relies on water during hot, dry summers,” he explained.
Narelle van der Wel, WMO’s Head of Cryosphere Monitoring, Predictions and Services, stressed that while some further glacier loss is unavoidable, the eventual scale of the decline is not predetermined.
“Some glacier loss is inevitable, but total loss of glaciers is not yet inevitable,” she said, pointing to emissions reductions as central to limiting future losses.
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The report does not attribute every observed change to climate change alone. WMO says pressure on water resources and natural variability also contribute.
Mr. Jenkinson said governments need to prepare for “moving baselines” as historical patterns become less reliable.
“The situation 30 years ago is not where we are today,” he said. Countries, he added, need to prepare “for those changes that have really already arrived”.
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