Gaza City – Under Fire And Out Of Cash, U.N. Overwhelmed By Gaza Crisis

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    Palestinian boys, who fled houses following Israeli offensive, play soccer as they take refuge at a United Nations-run school in Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip July 31, 2014. Reuters Gaza City – The United Nations in Gaza is struggling to withstand a flood of almost a quarter of a million refugees into shelters that have repeatedly come under Israeli fire.

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    Out of cash, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the main U.N. body in the impoverished enclave of 1.8 million Palestinians, says it can barely handle the humanitarian crisis unleashed by more than three weeks of fighting between militants and Israel.

    Asked to explain the scale of the civilian suffering to an Arab news station, an UNRWA spokesman simply burst into tears.

    “There are times when tears speak more eloquently than words. Mine pale into insignificance compared with Gaza’s,” Chris Gunness said.

    “UNRWA is overwhelmed in Gaza. We have reached breaking point; our staff are being killed, our shelters overflowing. Where will it end … UNRWA now has 225,178 displaced in 86 shelters. But Gaza is being destroyed. So when the war is over, where will these people go?” Gunness said.

    At dawn on Wednesday, Israeli forces shelled a girls’ school doubling as a refuge for more than 3,000 people, killing at least 15, including four children, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

    Eight U.N. employees have been killed since Israel launched its offensive on July 8 after rocket fire from Gaza intensified. U.N. shelters have been bombed by Israel on six separate occasions, including in another shelling of a U.N. shelter last week that killed 15 people.

    Israel said its forces had come under fire from the vicinity of the school on Wednesday and responded. It denies targeting civilians and says militants use innocents as human shields and their neighborhoods as firing positions.

    Gaza officials say more than 1,370 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed in the battered enclave. Israel says 56 of its soldiers and three civilians have been killed.

    Even in peacetime, the U.N. was under strain to provide food aid to a million Gaza residents, over half the total population.

    UNRWA made an urgent appeal for $187 million on Thursday to buy beds and basic supplies for those who fled and to stem the rise of diseases in shelters.

    Insecticide and medicine were urgently needed for refugees in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, the U.N.’s humanitarian affairs department said, “to treat epidemics such as lice and scabies, which started to spread in shelters”.
    A Palestinian boy, who fled his family's house following Israeli offensive, sleeps as he takes refuge inside a classroom at a United Nations-run school in Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip July 31, 2014. Reuters
    Clean water, food and drugs are in short supply and being delivered to refugee families, and the U.N. said hundreds of thousands of traumatized children would need urgent psychiatric help.

    SCHOOL TURNED CAMP

    The central courtyard of a U.N. school in the city of Gaza has become a teeming refugee camp housing desperate and scared families.

    Hundreds of unwashed bodies rendered the air stale. Restless kids played with dolls and kicked around a soccer ball improvised out of a piece of leather. Anxious adults lay in the shade of corridors or cramped classrooms, filled with anxiety.

    Samir Al-Tumi, 60, said he and his family were planning to leave and take their chances in their home neighborhood of Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza strip, despite ongoing battles there and Israeli army warnings for locals to leave.

    “I feel I would be safer outside the UNRWA school … I prefer to take my family and return to my house and die there instead of dying here,” he said.

    Tumi echoed the sentiments of many refugees there when he said he believed world powers had failed them and had allowed innocent people to be killed.

    “I urge the United Nations Security Council, be merciful to our children, not to us – we are adults and maybe we have done mistakes in our life – but what about those children, what could they be guilty of?” he said.

    The U.N. has urged the immediate conclusion of so-far fruitless regional talks for a ceasefire and suggested the mass deaths at its facilities were cause for Israel to be investigated for the attacks on its schools.

    “We have moved beyond what humanitarian action alone can deal with. This is now the time for political action. It is the time for accountability,” UNRWA’s chief Pierre Krähenbühl told reporters in Gaza’s main hospital on Thursday.

    “The attack on the Jabalya school … is probably one of the most tragic protection failures that the international community has witnessed,” he added.


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    11 Comments
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    Anominous
    Anominous
    9 years ago

    Now that Gazans are crammed together, it’s time to say out lout we want Hamas out. We want peace! No more war!

    Nissim613
    Nissim613
    9 years ago

    Besides the fact that there is a ton of empty Arab land in the middle east, perhaps these Palestinians should join their brethen in the west bank. Let Israel have Gaza back.

    puppydogs
    puppydogs
    9 years ago

    Time for them to shut their doors

    posaikacharon
    posaikacharon
    9 years ago

    they voted this murderous government into power….. they are unfortunately getting exactly what they asked for. you vote for violence; you get violence. hamas never made a secret of what they stand for.

    fat36
    fat36
    9 years ago

    Could someone please find out why they’re not overwhelmed of what’s going on in Syria?

    HankM
    HankM
    9 years ago

    You don’t like it? GET OUT OF OUR LAND!

    Liepa
    Liepa
    9 years ago

    The UN should ask hamas choleras why they fired an onslaught of missiles into Israel, continuing as we speak! Let these savages foot the bill, nothing like this would have happened if they weren’t itching to attack Israel and its population.

    Sherree
    Sherree
    9 years ago

    When lets put it in common sense terms. Had UNWRA NOT allowed Hamas to use their facilities, Had UNWRA Announced to the world and to the UN Humanitarian organizations that Hamas was trying to take over their facilities and store ammunition and build tunnels under their facilities, Had UNWRA not chosen to side with Hamas and had been an honest unbiased humanitarian aid agency accepting supplies for the people of Gaza and NOT for the terrorist, then there would be no problem housing these innocent civilians would there? Then in truth, the UNWRA facilities whether they were schools, hospitals or clinics would still be standing untouched and unharmed!!

    9 years ago

    The impotent racist UN should leave, and as far as the poor innocents, I guess they shouldn’t have voted for hamas. I’ll bet f they had to to do over again they’d vote for them again.

    bklynlady
    bklynlady
    9 years ago

    Get Qatar and Turkey to foot the bill! They financed and supplied Hamas; let them pay for the consequences of their actions….