The humanitarian disaster in Gaza City continues, with living and health conditions deteriorating at an unprecedented rate, amid warnings from local and international organisations that the situation amounts to international crimes by Israel.
Gaza City: continued Israeli bombardment
Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal confirmed that around half a million people currently living in Gaza City are deprived of the most basic necessities of life, without food, water or medicine.
The Palestinian Civil Defence warned that the continuation of this humanitarian tragedy constitutes an ‘international crime’ that requires urgent action by the international community and human rights institutions to stop the bloodshed and protect civilians from ‘daily killings and extermination.’
Basal pointed out that the occupation is targeting the essentials of life inside the city ‘with all kinds of weapons.’
For his part, the spokesperson for the Public Service Hospital in Gaza said that the hospital is facing a ‘difficult humanitarian situation’ due to the acute shortage of medical supplies, noting that only four small hospitals are still operating in the city, despite the harsh conditions that hinder their work in receiving the wounded and sick.
UNICEF, for its part, confirmed that there is ‘no safe place’ for displaced persons from Gaza City to go, noting that the areas designated by Israel for civilians in the southern Gaza Strip ‘are nothing but places of death.’
In the same context, the Commissioner-General of UNRWA warned of the danger of Israeli rhetoric describing the approximately 250,000 people trapped in Gaza as terrorists or supporters of terrorism, considering that this ‘suggests plans for widespread massacres.’
He stressed that continued international tolerance of the crimes committed in the Strip ‘is no longer possible or acceptable.’
These statements come at a time when Israel continues its violent bombardment of various areas of the Gaza Strip, amid mounting warnings of a complete collapse of the health and humanitarian system, in the absence of any safe corridors for civilian relief or aid delivery.
Featured image via the Canary
By Steve Topple
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