Key points
- Gaza’s Health Ministry announces 19 deaths from starvation in last 24 hours
- Any damage to health clinics in the area “will have life-threatening consequences”: OCHA
- Latest order means that 87.8pc of Gaza’s area is now under displacement orders: OCHA
ISLAMABAD: An Israeli military order for residents and displaced people in Gaza’s Deir el-Balah area to move south dealt “another devastating blow” to humanitarian efforts in the war-ravaged territory, the UN’s OCHA aid agency said on Sunday.
Al Jazeera reported that Gaza’s Health Ministry has announced 19 deaths from starvation in the past 24 hours as the United Nations (UN) warns that the hunger crisis in the Palestinian enclave has reached “a new level of desperation”.
AFP reported that on Sunday morning, the Israeli military ordered those in the central Gaza area to leave immediately due to imminent operations, with whole families seen lugging their few belongings and heading south.
According to OCHA, UN staff were “remaining” in the territory and their coordinates had been shared with “relevant parties.”
“Displacement orders”
“These locations — as with all civilian sites — must be protected, regardless of displacement orders,” OCHA said, warning that any damage to health clinics, water infrastructure, and aid warehouses in the area “will have life-threatening consequences.”
Between 50,000 and 80,000 people were in the area when the evacuation order was issued, according to OCHA’s initial estimates.
Since the start of the war, nearly all of Gaza’s population — which is also facing severe food shortages — has been displaced at least once by repeated Israeli evacuation orders.
According to OCHA, the latest order means that 87.8 per cent of Gaza’s area is now under displacement orders or within Israeli militarized zones.
Over 2m Palestinians squeezed
That leaves “2.1 million civilians squeezed into a fragmented 12 per cent of the Strip, where essential services have collapsed,” said the UN agency.
The order “will limit the ability of the UN and our partners to move safely and effectively within Gaza, choking humanitarian access when it is needed most.”
Israel on Sunday withdrew the residency permit of the head of the OCHA office in the country, Jonathan Whittall, who has repeatedly condemned the humanitarian conditions in Gaza.
Israel’s military brutal offensive in Gaza has killed 58,895 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry. The UN finds these figures credible.
