Desperate Gazans Scour Aid Trucks for Food Amid Funding Crisis

APP
United Nations: As UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres began a meeting with representatives from countries that donate to the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) late on Tuesday following allegations of collusion with Hamas, the UN health agency, WHO, reiterated that now was not the time to abandon the people of Gaza.
Despite ongoing Israeli bombardment since October 7, UNRWA continues to provide lifesaving aid in Gaza to more than two million civilians.
The war has killed at least 26,637 Palestinians in Gaza and left 65,387 injured, according to the enclave’s health authorities. The Israeli military has reported 218 soldiers killed and 1,267 injured.
“The shelters, the health centers, and everything else are provided in Gaza through UNWRA,” said Christian Lindmeier, spokesperson for the UN World Health Organization (WHO).
Repeating the words of WHO Director-General TedrosAdhanomGhebreyesus, Lindmeier appealed to donors not to suspend funding to UNWRA “at this critical moment. Cutting off funding will only hurt the people of Gaza, who desperately need support.”
The United States said on Friday it had suspended funding in response to allegations made against 12 UNRWA staffers who Israel says took part in the October 7 attacks. A full and urgent investigation is underway, and some of the staff allegedly involved have been dismissed by the agency.
Despite the efforts of the UN agency and other humanitarian partners operating in Gaza, many people are on the verge of famine after nearly four months of war.
Some have resorted to scouring aid convoys for food and supplies, including one on Tuesday morning in the southern city of Khan Younis.
“We had a convoy just this morning trying to reach Nasser Hospital with patients, healthcare staff, and everybody there needing food, but the very needy population already basically took the supplies,” Lindmeier said.
The incident, far from a rare occurrence, “shows how dire the needs are,” he told journalists in Geneva, warning that disease among Gaza’s malnourished population “can just spread like wildfire, and that’s on top of the bombing, the shelling, and the collapsing buildings.”.
Within Nasser Hospital itself, the WHO official reported that the situation “has only gotten worse,” with “the shooting, the fighting, the difficulty of access for people to reach Nasser, or the difficulty of leaving.”.
The development came as UN Aid Coordination Office OCHA warned that more people had been uprooted from their homes amid ongoing fighting and evacuation orders from the Israeli military.
“We’re in the midst of another wave of displacement in #Gaza, following eviction orders for large residential areas and amid intense hostilities,” OCHA said in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “More people are killed or injured. The south is overcrowded, and humanitarian access to the north is extremely limited.”