GENEVA (Dispatches) – United Nations agencies called “on our knees” on Tuesday for aid to be allowed unimpeded into Gaza, saying more than 20 times current deliveries were needed to support its Palestinian population after two weeks of Zionist airstrikes.
UN organizations have been making increasingly desperate appeals since the Zionist regime imposed a full blockade on the coastal strip and began bombardments.
Trucks of aid began moving into Gaza from Egypt on Saturday after intense diplomatic efforts, but the agencies say they are far from enough. Half of the enclave’s 2.3 million people are homeless, many people have been wounded and food and clean water is in short supply.
“The aid which resumed from Egypt over the weekend is a mere drop in the ocean of what is needed,” said Jeremy Laurence, Spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
Brian Lander, deputy head of emergencies at the World Food Programme, said that some 465 trucks of humanitarian aid were needed per day to support the population in Gaza prior to the conflict.
“We’re seeing at best 20 trucks a day at the moment,” he said, stressing that the people of Gaza were dire need of water, food and other essential products.
WHO said medicines and health supplies had been delivered to three key referral hospitals in southern Gaza but that it still needed to reach the north of the Palestinian enclave, one of the most densely-populated places in the world.
“We still have not been able to reach the hospitals in the north with the medical supplies or the desperately needed fuel,” said Dr Rick Brennan, WHO Regional Emergencies Director for Eastern Mediterranean Region.
“We are on our knees asking for that sustained, scaled up, protected humanitarian operation,” he said.
“We appeal to all of those in a situation to make a decision or to influence decision-makers to give us the humanitarian space to address this human catastrophe.”
The United Nations Palestinian refugee agency also called for an unimpeded flow of humanitarian assistance to Gaza, trapped in a humanitarian crisis after two weeks of intense Zionist attacks.
“We call for an unimpeded and continuous flow of humanitarian assistance and medical assistance to continue coming into Gaza,” said Tamara Alrifai, spokesperson for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
“The trucks that have come in so far are just a trickle in the face of the immense needs of people on the street.”
The UN General Assembly will meet Thursday to discuss the conflict, the body’s president announced in a letter to member states.
The Security Council has so far failed to agree on a resolution concerning the war, but a number of states — including Jordan on behalf of an Arab group of nations, Russia, Syria, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Cambodia — formally requested General Assembly President Dennis Francis to schedule the meeting.