U.N. agency slams U.S.-backed Gaza aid effort as “a death trap,” as health officials say 79 people killed

Tel Aviv – The head of the United Nations agency supporting the Palestinian refugees condemned a Controversial humanitarian organization in the United States and Israeli Operating in Gaza, the appellant “an abomination” and “a death trap costing more lives than it saves”.

Philippe Lazzarini’s declaration, general commissioner of UNRWA, criticizing the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) came while the Gaza Ministry of Health managed by Hamas said that 79 people had been killed in Palestinian territory in the previous 24 hours, including 51 years, of which he had died near GHF sites.

“There is no food. People have hungry to death, and no one cares about Gaza. No one is talking about what’s going on in Gaza,” a man told CBS Nasser in Gaza, where injuries were brought to care, told CBS News. “Young men at their peak die. What leads these young people to go to help sites? It is hunger. Hunger fire ravaged the people.”

Another man from Nasser’s hospital said, “I send this message to mothers and fathers, so as not to send their children. The young people who are barely 17 years old die in vain, just to obtain houmous or a bag of flour to feed their families. The Israeli army is waiting to kill them as you can see here. Look at the victims here. Most of them have been killed. Die.

“Humanitarian principles should be restored,” said Lazzarini in his declaration. “The humanitarian community, including UNRWA, has expertise and must be authorized to do their job and provide assistance with respect and dignity.”

“In Gaza, atrocities continue while world attention changes elsewhere,” said Lazzarini after 12 days Air strikes and missiles between Israel and Iran. “A confined and captive population is bombed, besieged and constantly moved. More than 55,000 people are reported, most of them, women and children. Two million people are hungry, among them 1 million children. We have said it several times and I say it again: no place is safe in Gaza, and no one is spared.”

The CBS News team in Gaza reported on Monday a decrease in the intensity of Israeli bombings, with drones and fighter planes seen in the sky, but most of the violence affecting people approaching the distribution of Aid from the GHF.

GHF said on Tuesday in a statement that the distribution “on all sites occurred without incident. However, today, GHF has officially raised complaints to the FDI concerning the possible harassment of Israeli soldiers directed against our convoys” heading to one of its aid centers.

The group has also rejected, as it does in all its daily statements, against what it called “false allegations of attacks close to the aid distribution sites”, and he added that “the Gaza Ministry of Health affiliated in Hamas is not a credible source of information, because it does not report the United Nations Convocates or Distribution Sites which are not linked to violent incidents”.

Israel and the United States said the new GHF system was necessary to prevent Hamas from siphoning aid, which the terrorist organization designated by the United States denies. The financing and management of the GHF have remained unclear since he started his operations in mid-May, but it is made up of private and well-armed American security entrepreneurs.

Meanwhile, a limited number of trucks with humanitarian aid for the World Central Kitchen non-profit group based in the United States would have entered the Gaza Strip.

COGAT, the agency which coordinates Israel’s operations in the Palestinian territories under the authority of the country’s Ministry of Defense, said that more than half a million baby food books had entered Gaza on Monday. Israeli defense forces said 79 trucks from various help organizations carrying food and medical supplies had entered Gaza on Monday.

Before and for a large part of the current war in Gaza, UNRWA provided studies, health care, humanitarian aid and social services to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees in several countries across the Middle East, but the group has long been accused by Israeli authorities of links with terrorism.

In January, two Israeli laws entered into force to ban UNRWA operations in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Israeli officials accused a dozen UNRWA The staff members in Gaza were accomplices of the terrorist attack on October 7, 2023 of Hamas who sparked the war. Lazzarini from UNRWA, following an internal United Nations investigation, a licensed nine staff membersBut said that the agency’s priority had remained “to continue rescue and critical services for Palestinian refugees in Gaza and the region”.

UNRWA later said that the Israeli government had provided no evidence of its accusations, a position that was supported by an later independent examination of the United Nations. However, the allegations against UNRWA prompted the US government to temporarily suspend its funding for the agency and President Trump, earlier this year, makes the end of American support For the indefinite agency.

In March, UNRWA launched a public call For a resumption of American financing.

“UNRWA’s financial situation is disastrous,” Lazzarini said on Tuesday. “The cash flows are now managed on a weekly basis instead of monthly and even less each year. Without additional funding, I will soon have unprecedented decisions affecting our services to the Palestinian refugees in the region.

Lazzarini stressed that UNRWA provides a range of services to Palestinian refugees that operation Palestinian stateIf we were to be created, could take over, including education and medical care.

“A real political process limited in time would allow the agency to finally transform its government-type services to authorize and prepare public institutions in the service of Palestinians,” he said. “In the absence of an ordered transition, the sudden loss or the reduction of UNRWA services will only deepen the suffering and despair through the occupied Palestinian territory. This could arouse troubles in neighboring countries. This is something that the region cannot afford, especially now.”