WHO Warns of Critical Shortage of Medicine, Fuel in Gaza

Date: 20 May 2024 - 22:15

News ID: ۱۲۷۵۲۸

GAZA (Dispatches) – The Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that with the continued closure of the Rafah Crossing since 6 May, essential medicine and fuel supplies have become critically low in Gaza, and movement is restricted due to security constraints.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus added in a post on X that recent Israeli “evacuation orders, intensified bombardment and no passage for aid across Gaza continue to put civilian lives and health at grave risk.”
The UN official also expressed deep concern about reports of “intensive hostilities near Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, with an increase in the influx of injured patients to the hospital, given its limited capacity to provide care.”
Ghebreyesus concluded by saying: “We have lost the words to describe the situation in Gaza. It is high time for a ceasefire and peace for the civilians there.”
Meanwhile, Salama Marouf, Gaza’s Government Media Office spokesman, told reporters that Israeli forces are “purposefully worsening the humanitarian situation by halting the entry of aid supplies from the Rafah and Karem Abu Salem border crossings, and by targeting hospitals and schools in eastern Rafah.”
The remarks come as the Israeli military has threatened a major assault on Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip along the border with Egypt. The city is a refuge for more than 1.4 million Palestinians who have fled aggression farther north in the coastal sliver under the Israeli army’s previous evacuation orders.
According to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), an average of 200 people are leaving Rafah every hour – mainly to Deir al-Balah in central Gaza and to the widely destroyed southern city of Khan Younis.
Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after Palestinian resistance groups carried out a surprise retaliatory operation into the occupied territories.
Concomitantly with the war, the regime has been enforcing a near-total siege on the coastal territory, which has reduced the flow of foodstuffs, medicine, electricity, and water into the Palestinian territory into a trickle.
The Israeli war has killed at least 35,456 Gazans, most of them women, children, and adolescents. Another 79,476 Palestinians have sustained injuries as well.