Top officials at the United Nations are warning of an \u201capocalyptic\u201d situation in war-torn Gaza with \u201cno place safe to go\u201d for civilians, as Israel\u2019s war with Hamas spreads into the south, where many had previously sought refuge. <\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time we think things cannot get any more apocalyptic in Gaza, they do,\u201d said Martin Griffiths, the top UN emergency relief official, in a\u00a0statement\u00a0on Monday. \u201cPeople are being ordered to move again, with little to survive on, forced to make one impossible choice after another,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cSuch blatant disregard for basic humanity must stop,\u201d he also said. <\/p>\n
Israel has been intensifying its aerial bombardment of southern Gaza in pursuit of Palestinian militant group Hamas and said over the weekend that it will expand ground operations to the whole of the\u00a0territory. <\/p>\n
\u201cIntense battles\u201d are still taking place in northern Gaza, where two Israeli soldiers were killed during \u201cclose-quarter combat\u201d with Hamas fighters, the military said on Monday. <\/p>\n
The Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in\u00a0Gaza\u00a0said 108 people had been killed at the Kamal Adwan\u00a0hospital\u00a0in northern\u00a0Gaza, with dozens more injured, after heavy explosions and gunfire rocked the facility. <\/p>\n
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Tuesday its troops have \u201ccompleted the encirclement\u201d of the Jabalia refugee camp. The camp, also in the north, have seen intensive Israeli military operations since the week-long pause in the conflict ended. <\/p>\n
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday appealed to the IDF to spare civilians from more suffering. \u201cCivilians \u2013 including health workers, journalists and UN personnel \u2013 and civilian infrastructure must be protected at all times,\u201d Guterres\u2019 statement said, noting that despite evacuation orders, \u201cthere is nowhere safe to go in Gaza.\u201d <\/p>\n
Palestinian civilians have been told to flee large swaths of\u00a0Gaza, with the\u00a0IDF releasing QR codes that show several online maps detailing\u00a0areas it deems unsafe. However it is unclear how many residents the warnings are reaching, given damage to the enclave\u2019s telecommunications services and electricity shortages. <\/p>\n
As of last week, 1.8 million people in Gaza were estimated to be internally displaced, according to the UN \u2013 roughly 80% of the population. <\/p>\n
Scores of wounded people could be seen being in footage taken from\u00a0rubble\u00a0and to hospitals in southern Gaza throughout Monday. One Reuters video showed a baby being rushed from a civilian car into Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis. The 2-month-old lies on a stretcher, apparently unconscious, as doctors remove his clothes and connect him to an oxygen supply. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey told us to leave Gaza, there\u2019s a war in Gaza, so we left (the north) and came here to the south just like they asked. But this is what we\u2019ve found in the south,\u201d Ibrahim Esbeitan, the baby\u2019s father said in the video, pointing at this child. <\/p>\n
In Salah Al-Arja, in Rafah, residents were seen trying to rescue their loved ones from the rubble with their bare hands. \u201cWe were asleep and safe, they told us it was a safe area, Rafah and all, but at twenty past ten, they stuck it with barrels, destroying all the block, there were children, women, and martyrs,\u201d an unnamed local resident told Reuters. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no safe area, neither Rafah, nor Khan Younis, nor Gaza, nor Dier, they are all liars, they say it is a safe area, they let us seek refuge, they evacuated Khan Younis and Gaza and still they bomb.\u201d <\/p>\n
The head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, also warned against \u201chorrors\u201d that could follow in the wake of Israel\u2019s expanding military operation, noting that an additional 60,000 people are now seeking shelter in overcrowded UN facilities. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe evacuation order pushes people to concentrate into what is less than one-third of the Gaza Strip. They need everything:\u00a0food, water, shelter, and mostly safety. Roads to the south are clogged,\u201d Lazzarini said Monday, noting that access to water is limited in Gaza. <\/p>\n
To resupply humanitarian aid efforts in Gaza, 180 humanitarian aid trucks carrying food, water, shelter materials and medical supplies were sent to the Rafah crossing on Monday at the request of the US Administration and in coordination with Egypt, according to Israel\u2019s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. Two diesel fuel tankers were also sent from Egypt to aid agencies operating in the strip, it said. <\/p>\n
What remains of the health system and infrastructure in Gaza is far from sufficient for the battered population\u2019s needs as it enters a third month of siege, experts say. <\/p>\n
Eighteen of Gaza\u2019s 36 hospitals are still functioning, but can only provide partial services, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday, adding that the 12 operational hospitals in the south are \u201cthe backbone of the health system.\u201d <\/p>\n
A WHO team visiting Nasser Hospital said the conditions there were \u201ccatastrophic\u201d amid a flood of patients on Monday. \u201cThe the building and hospital grounds [are] grossly overcrowded with patients and displaced people seeking shelter,\u201d the statement said. \u201cThe emergency ward is overflowing with patients\u2026Many patients are being treated on the floor.\u201d <\/p>\n
In a voice message\u00a0posted\u00a0on Monday, UNICEF spokesperson James Elder also described harrowing conditions in Nasser Hospital rooms after a blast had hit less than 100 meters away. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere must be a hundred people, children now have been woken up by the bombs and explosions,\u201d Elder said as babies\u2019 cries could be heard in the background. <\/p>\n
\u201cParents just have that look of.. the feeling no parent ever wants to experience, which is helplessness,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere is damage inside the [Kamal Adwan] hospital due to the heavy fall of shrapnel on the hospital building and on the displaced people in the hospital\u2019s yard,\u201d Anas Al-Sharif said as explosions were heard in the background. <\/p>\n
This is a developing story and will be updated.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n Top officials at the United Nations are warning of an \u201capocalyptic\u201d situation in war-torn…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":16621,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}