On 29 October 2023, Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini,  United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), addressed a ceremony to honour the memory of its 59 staff members who have lost their lives in Gaza helping Palestinians since the Hamas raid on Israel on 7 October.

These deaths are in addition to more than 8,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, which the Health Ministry in Gaza says have been killed by Israel bombardment, and to more than 110 Palestinians killed in violence and Israeli raids in the West Bank illegally occupied by Israel.

Over the same period, Hamas have killed more than 1,400 Israelis and over 200 have been taken hostage.

On the same day, thousands of people broke into several UNRWA warehouses and distribution centres in the middle and southern areas of the Gaza Strip, taking wheat flour and other basic survival items like hygiene supplies.

Thomas White, Director of UNRWA Affairs in the Gaza Strip said: “This is a worrying sign that civil order is starting to break down after three weeks of war and a tight siege on Gaza. People are scared, frustrated and desperate. Tensions and fear are made worse by the cuts in the phones and internet communication lines. They feel that they are on their own, cut off from their families inside Gaza and the rest of the world. Supplies on the market are running out while the humanitarian aid coming into the Gaza Strip on trucks from Egypt is insufficient. The needs of the communities are immense, if only for basic survival, while the aid we receive is meagre and inconsistent.”

But on the same day, Israel Defence Force Col. Elad Goren, who heads the civilian department of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), said that a second pipeline was reopened on the previous day and there was now enough water being supplied to Gaza for basic humanitarian needs and insisted that there was no shortage of either food or water for the territory’s residents.

He added that the amount of humanitarian aid that will be transferred to the territory will “increase dramatically” in the coming weeks.