Emergency in Gaza: UN: Humanitarian situation in Gaza Strip becoming increasingly catastrophic

Once again, tens of thousands of people in the Gaza Strip have had to flee following a recent evacuation order from Israel’s military. According to the United Nations, they are being left to their fate in a precarious humanitarian situation with devastating hygienic conditions. Humanitarian facilities are having to close. People are even being driven out of emergency shelters to which they fled from the war. UN organizations are warning that the crisis for civilians will worsen further.

“Every man, woman and child in the Gaza Strip has suffered unimaginable violence, displacement, disease, hunger and humiliation,” said Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN emergency relief agency Ocha, to the dpa. “We fear that every day will be more hellish than the one before until the guns fall silent, the displacement in the war zone stops and we can bring in all the life-saving aid that is needed and we can move around safely in the Gaza Strip.” People need everything: food, drinking water, hygiene products, medicine and psychosocial support to deal with the horrors they have experienced.

150,000 people have fled Khan Yunis again

At the beginning of the week, Israel called on residents of an area in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip to leave their homes because of a new military operation. According to estimates by the UN emergency relief office OCHA, 150,000 people hastily fled their makeshift homes. They are to be accommodated in the humanitarian zone Al-Mawasi west of Khan Yunis and Rafah, where many people have already fled. “Many were seen walking around without any personal belongings,” said OCHA.

Pictures from Khan Yunis show masses of people hurrying out of the city towards the west. “Old people on donkey carts, people with disabilities being pushed through the sand in wheelchairs with their belongings piled up on their laps,” reported a spokeswoman for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). “People hear gunshots and run for their lives.”

Many people are fleeing to already overcrowded areas. “People are being forced to go to areas with little or no infrastructure, with limited access to shelter, health care, sanitation and other humanitarian assistance,” said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric on Tuesday. According to OCHA, there were four medical facilities and eight soup kitchens and food distribution centers in the area. All but one community kitchen had to close.

Hygienic conditions in Gaza Strip devastating

There and in large parts of the sealed-off coastal strip, the hygienic conditions are disastrous. People live in overcrowded tent camps. Mountains of garbage are piling up everywhere because there is a lack of diesel for trucks to transport it away, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The unhygienic conditions therefore massively increase the risk of disease.

Feces and sewage are floating through the streets unfiltered because there is no diesel for the generators in the sewage treatment plants. In the unhygienic conditions with few toilets and little drinking water, tens of thousands of people are suffering from diarrhea and skin rashes. Dust from the destroyed buildings is causing respiratory infections.

Polio virus discovered in wastewater samples

Under these conditions, the risk of disease spreading is very high, according to WHO information. For example, the polio virus, which causes polio, was discovered in sewage. The polio virus has not yet been detected in any patient, but the risk of polio is very high, said WHO representative Ayadil Saparbekov on Tuesday. He warned of a worsening situation there: “It could be that more people die from infectious diseases than from injuries.”

Humanitarian and medical facilities have already had to close. According to WHO figures, only 16 of the 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip can operate with restrictions. Of the ten field hospitals, four are still fully operational, while another four are operating with restrictions. If diseases continue to spread, the situation in the hospitals will worsen.

The Gaza War was triggered by the unprecedented massacre carried out by terrorists from Hamas and other extremist Palestinian organizations in southern Israel on October 7. They killed more than 1,200 people and abducted another 250 as hostages in the Gaza Strip.