GENEVA (Dispatches) – The United Nations appealed on Wednesday for $2.8 billion in funding to assist more than three million people in Gaza and the West Bank until the end of the year, to help ease food shortages and prevent looming famine in Gaza.
A flash appeal published by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that sum was needed to help 3.1 million people and “reduce human suffering and prevent further loss of life.”
A major chunk of funding — $782.1 million — will be destined for food aid for 2.2 million people in Gaza and 400,000 people in the West Bank, the appeal said.
More than six months of war have created critical food shortages among Gaza’s Palestinians that in some areas now exceed famine levels, according to the United Nations.
A senior UN aid official said on Tuesday that the United Nations was struggling to prevent famine in the Gaza Strip and while there had been some improvement in coordination with the Zionist regime, aid deliveries in the enclave still faced obstacles.
Gaza health authorities say Israel has killed more than 33,000 people since, in its onslaught on the enclave since October 7.
Meanwhile, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) has announced about 1.7 million Palestinians have been forcibly displaced inside Gaza due to the Zionist regime’s genocidal war against the people of Palestine.
UNHCR spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said during a press conference at the United Nations office in Geneva that “resolving the catastrophic situation experienced by civilians in Gaza must remain a priority.”
“UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk urges all states with influence to do everything in their power to halt the increasingly horrific human rights and humanitarian crisis in Gaza, rising violence and targeted attacks in the West Bank, and the heightened risk of a wider escalation of conflict in the Middle East,” Shamdasani said.
She said that “Israel continues to impose unlawful restrictions on the entry and distribution of humanitarian assistance, and to carry out widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure.”
Shamdasani added, “There are about 1.7 million forcibly displaced people in Gaza. These people live in terrifying conditions and under constant threat.”
“In the past week alone, fighting has intensified in Middle Gaza leading to the displacement of some 10,000 people from in and around a Nuseirat camp and near Wadi Gaza,” she said.  
“Those delivering or trying to access humanitarian assistance must never be attacked,” added Shamdasani.
Shamdasani said that UNHCR also received reports that during Eid al-Fitr last week, the Israel forces attacked at least eight mosques in a Nuseirat and Gaza City, and struck a further three on 14 April.
Since October 2023, 534 mosques have been destroyed or damaged according to the Gaza Government Media Office. Places of worship are protected under the laws of war, she noted.
Shamdasani pointed out that the increasing violence against Palestinian and their proprieties in the occupied West Bank the past days.