The United Nations warned Monday that the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is growing more dire, as aid trucks will stop moving by Tuesday without more fuel, water wells have stopped pumping, and a telecommunications blackout looms.
“Humanitarian cease-fire, fuel, supplies — all of these should be happening now,” Andrea De Domenico, head of the U.N.’s humanitarian office in East Jerusalem told reporters via a video briefing. “We are running out of time before really facing a major disaster.”
He said 76 trucks with food, medicines, health supplies, bottled water, blankets and other urgent supplies crossed from Egypt into Gaza on Sunday, but that by Tuesday they could come to a halt without urgently needed fuel.
“The trucks that will arrive starting from tomorrow, we will not simply be able to unload them because we don’t have the fuel for the forklift and we do not have the fuel for the trucks that distribute that assistance out to the people in need,” De Domenico said.
Israel has banned fuel deliveries saying Hamas will divert it for their war machine.
The Israel Defense Forces have been battling the U.S.-designated terrorist group for more than a month now, since its fighters breached Israeli towns and cities on October 7, massacring 1,200 people and abducting 240 others.
The entire Gaza Strip, which is controlled by Hamas, has been under an electricity blackout for more than one month, crippling the work of hospitals and shutting down desalination plants, municipal water wells and bakeries.
Palestinian telecommunications provider Paltel said it faces a total blackout starting this Thursday if fuel is not received.
“The situation is really, really dire,” U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters. “We are extremely concerned about what might happen over the next few days.”
Exodus from the north
In the north, thousands of Gazans are taking advantage of Israel’s recent unilateral brief daily pauses in the hostilities to move south to safer areas, most on foot. But the hundreds of thousands left behind are facing an increasingly grave situation as fighting intensifies and supplies run out.
De Domenico said no aid trucks have been able to cross to the north in at least five days, since the Israeli military began closing in on the heart of Gaza City, making it too dangerous for humanitarians to move.
No bakeries have been operational since November 7, and the area has been under an electricity blackout and without running water for more than one month. The World Food Program has expressed concern about malnutrition and starvation.
Hospitals have been caught in increasing bombardments and clashes, putting staff, patients and displaced civilians sheltering in their compounds in growing danger. The sickest patients in intensive care units and newborns in neonatal units face death if the machines that keep them alive shut down because of a lack fuel.
The U.N. says its facilities in south and central Gaza are sheltering 780,000 of the 1.6 million displaced Gazans, but they warn that nowhere in the Strip is safe.
On Sunday, an UNRWA guesthouse in the southern city of Rafah housing international staff received three direct hits from Israeli naval fire. The agency, which assists Palestinians, said no staff were hurt, as they had left to do fieldwork just 90 minutes before the strike, but the building was significantly damaged. UNRWA said the parties to the conflict are aware of the coordinates of all its premises.
On Monday, the U.N. flag flew at half-staff at the organization’s headquarters in New York and at duty stations around the world to honor the 101 Palestinian UNRWA staffers killed since October 7.
