UN Geneva - Multimedia Newsroom : Gaza Update: OCHA

UN humanitarians deplore unacceptable conditions for medical evacuations and humanitarian aid delivery in Gaza

UN humanitarians in conflict-ridden Gaza again expressed their deep discontent on Tuesday about the access llimitations imposed by the Israeli military for desperately needed aid operations. Last weekend, ambulances transporting patients in need of medical attention from the Al Amal hospital in Gaza's Khan Younis were halted for several hours by the Israeli Defense Forces, as paramedics were stripped of their clothes and other humanitarian staff detained, they said.

“The Israeli forces blocked the World Health Organization (WHO)-led convoy for many hours the moment it left the hospital. The Israeli military forced patients and staff out of ambulances and stripped all paramedics of their clothes,” said Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) at a UN press briefing in Geneva. “Three Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) paramedics were subsequently detained, although their personal details had been shared with the Israeli forces in advance, while the rest of the convoy stayed in place for over seven hours.”

Mr. Laerke explained that the UN had not "had any information or any communication from the Israeli authorities why this clearly notified movement, which they, by the way, acknowledged that we had sent them the notification, was still detained, as I said, at least seven hours.”

One paramedic has now been released, according to OCHA, who are appealing for the immediate release of the other two, as well as all other detained health workers.

According to WHO, the 24 patients, including a pregnant woman, a mother and a newborn, had to be transferred to hospitals in Rafah as several of them required surgical intervention which could not be performed at Al Amal. Al Amal Hospital has been the epicenter of military operations in Khan Younis for nearly a month now. . Forty attacks on the hospital from 22 January to 22 February have at least 25 people and left the facilities non-functional, OCHA says.

“You can imagine being already transferred under life-threatening circumstances, not being able to move or being able to move and then being made to stand outside and having to wait for seven hours is pretty unimaginable,” said Christian Lindmeier, a spokesperson for WHO.

The WHO informed that only 12 out of 36 hospitals are “partially functioning in Gaza of which six are in the south and six in the north. However, 23 hospitals are not functioning at all." The inadequate facilitation aid delivery through Gaza means that humanitarian workers are unable to safely deliver aid both to northern Gaza and, increasingly, to parts of southern Gaza.

“No humanitarian aid has reached the North since 23 January,” noted Mr. Lindmeier. “That's over a month now, five weeks. WHO last time reached Al Shifa Hospital, for example, on 22 January. And the urgent access now of humanitarian aid is needed to avoid further preventable deaths from malnutrition and diseases.”

OCHA also raised alarms of the ineffectiveness of the current way of that goods must be brought into Gaza. “It is very complicated at the moment because there is only the opening into Gaza from the South, which means you have to traverse an entire war zone from the extreme south to the extreme north to deliver aid,” said OCHA’s spokesperson. “Whereas it would be much more logical, practical and efficient if we had border crossings directly in the north where we could just cross in and deliver aid.”

Describing Gaza as a “chaotic war zone”, Mr. Laerke added that “we acknowledge that we have tremendous difficulties distributing the aid that does get in across Gaza. That is certainly not a situation of our making. It is the war itself that creates it. On the top of our list of things that needs to happen, and there is no way around it, is a humanitarian cease fire.”

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Gaza Update: OCHA - WHO

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