UN Geneva - Multimedia Newsroom : Gaza - Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA

In Gaza, ‘every hour counts’, says UNRWA chief in ceasefire plea

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, repeated his urgent call for a ceasefire in Gaza on Friday, amid increased military Israeli activity in the enclave’s largest city.

“Every hour today counts, the more we wait, the more people will die,” said Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA Commissioner-General, who highlighted the many lethal dangers confronting Gazans today.

“Either they will die because of the military operation under bombardment, or they die because they could not be assisted in time and they are silently dying because of hunger,” he told UN News in Geneva.

“They’re even dying because they try to desperately seek for food going to these infamous distribution places of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,” Mr. Lazzarini said, referring to the controversial non-UN aid hubs where supplies are distributed to those able to walk to them and carry away lifesaving relief.

According to the UN human rights office, OHCHR, since 27 May and until 17 August, 1,857 Palestinians have been killed “while seeking food”, including 1,021 killed near Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites. Another 836 Palestinians have been killed on supply truck routes; “most of these killings appear to have been committed by the Israeli military”, OHCHR noted.

The UNRWA chief also echoed the UN Secretary-General’s appeal on Thursday for an immediate halt to the Israeli military escalation in Gaza City and the release of all hostages taken in Hamas-led terror attacks that sparked the war in October 2023.

The violence “has to stop immediately”, Mr. Lazzarini said. “People living in Gaza are now in a state of famine which has been declared about a week ago and now we are talking about a major military offensive, with a total evacuation of an extremely weakened population.”

Repeated mass displacement has become commonplace in Gaza, including for one UNRWA worker in the north of the enclave, reportedly uprooted for the nineteenth time and forced to seek shelter, the agency said earlier this week.

The problem is that nowhere is safe in Gaza, Mr. Lazzarini insisted, responding to reports of further bombing in the coastal shelter of Al Mawasi near Khan Younis.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced to Al Mawasi have little or no access to essential services and supplies, including food, water, electricity and tents.

Despite this dire situation, “there is no other place than Al Mawasi for the people there to go because the rest of the Gaza Strip are in a military zone with active fighting taking place,” he explained. “But even Al Mawasi…is not safe for the people because it can also be the targeting of a bombing. It's just unspeakable.”

Despite ongoing Israeli restrictions on the amount of aid reaching Gaza reported by UN aid coordinators, the UNRWA chief insisted that the agency’s staff are still providing lifesaving support to Gazans.

In addition to dispensing at least 15,000 medical consultations a day at UNRWA primary health centres, the UN agency screens children for acute malnutrition, manages waste management to prevent communicable disease spread and works to give access to safe drinking water. Some 100,000 people still shelter in its schools.

“Where UNRWA cannot function for the time being is when it comes to food distribution, to the delivery of lifesaving items to the people, because we have been constrained and prevented to bring anything since the ceasefire broke down in March this year,” Mr. Lazzarini explained.

Gaza - Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA

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