Philippe Lazzarini reports people in Gaza are “walking corpses”
On 24 July Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, wrote on X:
“People in Gaza are neither dead nor alive, they are walking corpses”: a colleague in #Gaza told me this morning.
Meanwhile, according to @UNRWA latest findings: one in every five children is malnourished in Gaza City as cases increase every day.
When child malnutrition surges, coping mechanisms fail, access to food & care disappears, famine silently begins to unfold.
Most children our teams are seeing are emaciated, weak & at high risk of dying if they don’t get the treatment they urgently need.
More than 100 people, the vast majority of them children, have reportedly died of hunger.
This deepening crisis is affecting everyone, including those trying to save lives in the war-torn enclave.
UNRWA frontline health workers, are surviving on one small meal a day, often just lentils, if at all.
They are increasingly fainting from hunger while at work.
When caretakers cannot find enough to eat, the entire humanitarian system is collapsing.
Parents are too hungry to care for their children.
Those who reach UNRWA clinics don’t have the energy, food, or means to follow medical advice.
Families are no longer coping, they are breaking down, unable to survive.
Their existence is threatened.
Allow humanitarian partners to bring unrestricted & uninterrupted humanitarian assistance to Gaza.
We, at UNRWA, have the equivalent of 6,000 loaded trucks of food & medical supplies in Jordan and Egypt.
Israel’s view of UNRWA
The Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs, Israel Katz, told the Munich Security Conference on 16 February 2024 that:
UNRWA has no place in the Gaza Strip. UNRWA is the problem, not the solution. UNRWA serves as an arm of the Hamas terrorist organization. 12 UNRWA employees were involved in the October 7 attack and the murder and kidnapping of Israelis.
UNRWA headquarters in Gaza were part of the Hamas terrorist organization, including the connection to terrorist tunnels. We have a lot of evidence of UNRWA’s involvement in terrorist activity – and we will expose it to the world. There are other international organizations able to replace UNRWA in Gaza. I call on the head of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, to resign immediately.”