The UN on Wednesday said women in the Gaza Strip are being forced to give birth on the streets as thousands are displaced amid Israeli military operations that have continued since October 2023.
“Israel’s offensive in Gaza is forcing women to give birth in the streets, without hospitals, doctors or clean water,” UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told a news conference, citing the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
The “UNFPA says that 23,000 women are going without care, and about 15 babies are being born each week with no medical help,” he added.
Dujarric urged the immediate protection of civilians, saying the situation on the ground “is worsening by the hour.” He stressed that “issuing displacement orders does not absolve parties to a conflict from their responsibilities to protect civilians in the conduct of their hostilities.”
He said Israel “once again ordered” people in Gaza City to leave within the next 48 hours and “move south along a temporary passageway on the Salah ad Din road, which is the one that runs through the center of the Gaza Strip.”
“Thousands of people continue to flee, amid active hostilities. Roads, as you can well imagine, are congested. People are hungry, and children are traumatized,” he said.
Dujarric reported that nearly 40,000 people were displaced to the south between Monday and Tuesday, with about 200,000 movements recorded since mid-August.
“Partners have set up three support points in areas receiving displaced people in southern Gaza to assist separated, orphaned and injured children,” he added.
Highlighting the collapse of health care services, the UN official said that “since the collapse of the ceasefire in March, 80 medical points and primary health care centers providing sexual and reproductive health outpatient services have been affected, with 65 out of service.”
Emphasizing that Israel continues to obstruct aid operations in the enclave, Dujarric said that “yesterday, two humanitarian movements to collect food cargo from the crossings into Gaza were either cancelled or denied.”
“Other missions were facilitated but faced impediments on the ground. The Zikim crossing remains closed for a fifth consecutive day,” he said.
The United Nations has condemned the deadly Israeli military offensive in Gaza City that occurred this past weekend, Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said on Monday.
The situation “is having an appalling impact on civilians enduring suffering and starvation,” he told journalists in New York.
“The United Nations condemns the deadly escalation of the Israeli military offensive which took place over the weekend across Gaza City, with scores of people reportedly killed or injured,” he said.
“We reiterate our call for the protection of civilians and humanitarian personnel and full respect for international law.”
70,000 more uprooted
In a post on X on Sunday, the head of the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, said that 10 of its buildings in Gaza City had been hit in the past four days alone, including seven schools and two clinics which were being used as shelters.
Almost 70,000 displaced people have headed south in the past few days, while UN partners counted 150,000 movements from north to south this past month.
Partners further reported that one third of malnutrition treatment facilities in Gaza City have shut down due to forced displacement orders, while the Ministry of Health today reported 425 deaths overall due to malnutrition and starvation in Gaza, about a third of which were children.
A call for ‘unimpeded humanitarian access’
Over the past few days, UN partners have managed to distribute 40,000 additional meals each day. As of Saturday, 558,000 daily meals were prepared and distributed by 20 UN partners to 116 kitchens.
“However, health services continue to be heavily constrained, since clinics have suspended their services due to insecurity and displacement orders,” warned Mr. Dujarric, adding that in Deir Al-Balah, only a few ambulances remain in order and are able to serve the thousands of people in need.
Additionally, 77 per cent of the road networks in Gaza have been damaged and according to UN aid coordination office OCHA, humanitarian aid continues to be obstructed.
On Sunday, only four of the 17 missions that the UN coordinated with the Israeli authorities were facilitated. Seven missions were denied, one of which was meant to deliver water tanks to the north, while another four were impeded in the field, and two were cancelled by the organisers.
Nevertheless, three humanitarian missions were accomplished, including the collection of fuel and food cargo from the Kerem Shalom/Karem Abu Salem crossing.
“Our humanitarian colleagues continue to call for unimpeded humanitarian access,” stressed Mr. Dujarric. “Aid should flow at scale through multiple crossings into and within Gaza, including the north,” accoeding to UN News.
The Palestinian Football Association announced Monday that 14-year-old Al-Hilal player Mohammed Ramez Al-Sultan was killed along with 14 members of his family in an Israeli airstrike on their home in the north of Gaza City.
In a statement, the association said the player was killed Friday when Israeli forces struck his family’s house in the Al-Tuwam area.
Al-Hilal Club wrote on the US social media company Facebook’s platform that Al-Sultan was “one of the graduates of the club’s academy accredited by FIFA” and that he was killed alongside his father and relatives, joining teammate Malik Abu Al-Amaren.
On Sept. 6, Abu Al-Amaren, a youth player for Al-Hilal, was shot dead by Israeli forces while waiting for humanitarian aid in northern Gaza.
The killing of Al-Sultan and his family comes amid ongoing Israeli attacks that have wiped out entire Palestinian families in Gaza and claimed the lives of athletes, journalists, doctors and students as part of the broader war targeting all sectors of society.
On Aug. 26, Jibril Rajoub, president of the Palestinian Football Association, said Palestinian sports are experiencing an “unprecedented catastrophe” after losing 774 members of the sports community to Israel’s war according to Anadolu.
He noted that the death toll included 355 football players, 277 from other sports federations and 142 scouts, in addition to 119 missing. He added that 15 sports journalists were also killed, while 288 sports facilities in the West Bank and Gaza were either totally or partially destroyed.
Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza has killed nearly 65,000 Palestinians since October 2023 and devastated the enclave, which faces famine.
Israel is facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice over its war in the territory.
Israeli strikes destroyed 10 of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees’ (UNRWA) buildings in Gaza City over the past four days, including seven schools and two clinics serving as shelters for thousands of displaced Palestinians, the agency’s commissioner-general said Sunday.
“No place is safe in Gaza. No one is safe. Airstrikes in Gaza City and the north are intensifying. More and more people are forced to leave, disoriented and uncertain, heading into the unknown,” Philippe Lazzarini wrote on the US social media company X’s platform according to Anadolu.
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini: “No place is safe in Gaza. No one is safe.” He said Israeli airstrikes are intensifying as families flee “into the unknown.” In four days, 10 UNRWA buildings — including schools and clinics sheltering thousands — were targeted. pic.twitter.com/zkTPThKe86
Lazzarini noted that UNRWA was forced to suspend health care at the Al-Shati refugee camp.
“We were forced to stop health care in Beach (Al-Shati) Camp, the only health care available north of Wadi Gaza. Our vital water and sanitation services are now only at half capacity,” he said.
“Our teams – 11,000 in total – continue to provide critical services in other parts of northern Gaza and the rest of the Gaza Strip,” he added, praising their determination to serve communities under “inhumane circumstances.”
Lazzarini concluded by saying: “How much longer until action is taken to reach a ceasefire?”
The Israeli army has been targeting high-rise buildings across Gaza City as part of its ongoing offensive to occupy Gaza City, ordering residents to move southward to a “safe humanitarian zone” in Al-Mawasi, Khan Younis, which has come under Israeli fire more than 100 times, killing hundreds of civilians.
According to Gaza’s Government Media Office, the Israeli army has destroyed 1,600 towers and residential buildings in Gaza City since Aug. 11, in addition to 13,000 tents, displacing more than 100,000 Palestinians.
The vast majority of Gaza City’s residents are now crowded into its western neighborhoods, which have witnessed concentrated and intense Israeli bombing since Friday.
Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza has killed nearly 65,000 Palestinians since October 2023 and devastated the enclave, which faces famine.
Israel is facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice over its war on the territory.
The Israeli genocide starting on 27 October, 2023 through mass bombs and missiles dropped on the Gaza Strip is being discribed as hell-on-earth. After 700 days of slaughter in which the enclave was reduced to ruin, debris and mass killings, Gazans speak of the “hell” they are going through between multiple and countless displacements, starvation and waiting in limbo for what is going to happen next. Their lives have been turned upside down and live in limbo of fog.
All the above interviews were conducted by Al Jazeera satellite channel on the 700 days of horrors the Israeli army has subjected the Palestinian civilians of Gaza to.
“700 days and the killings are still going on with the war taking everything from us,” said one man. “The blood of martyrs is still hemorrhaging,” he continued.
“I now envy the people who have died in this slaughter,” said another. “In this past 700 days, journalists were killed, civil defense men gone, hospitals bombed, children murdered and many other things disappeared…”
After 700 days there is nothing left, there is no children left, no food, no drink, starvation everywhere, life has become extremely difficult. I have started to say to myself I wish I was long dead and have left this sorry place,” said another woman.
What about the handicapped
‘“I have three teenager sons who are handicapped and the process of displacement with them is very difficult…we were forced to move by the Israeli army more than 15 times – I walked them, I sometimes carried them would you believe, there is no transport and walked under bombs and missiles, sometimes they’d fall very near us, the danger of being killed is real,” the father of the three said.
“There is no food, no drink, there is no place to live, the sewerage is bad, we can’t do anything.”
He added on this 700 day of living like this, the Israeli army has just called on us to keep moving. “They want to displace us yet again from the north to the south, what is next we don’t know.
We don’t have food, we don’t have water, we don’t have tents, we don’t have anything. On the 700 day, the world is just sitting and looking at us while we move from one place to another.
Another 30-year-old who lost her husband and five children and just stares into the void: “Now they are gone I feel life is empty and meaningless. I force myself to work just to forget but its like living in a distant memory and suddenly wake up to this nightmare.
Another man with five small children moving around him said: “I have a handicapped son – a grown up, as you can see and I have to carry him across my shoulder blades whenever we are ordered to keep moving.
We are at the end of our tethers after 700 days of devastation, we see death in front of our eyes, there is no let up, the kids keep screaming at all hours of the day and night. We don’t know what is going to happen to us and now we are called upon to keep moving.”
The same is true of another lady. Her plight is the same as many others. “We are being displaced from one place to another. After 700 days we are not able to settle down to establish a tent we can live in, being displaced is like losing one’s soul and I don’t know when this will end or how.
We are living in devastation, death, slow death. Today I envy the people who have died and become martyrs.”
Another man in crutches said: “Our savings have now ended, we are on aid to say alive, my son used to go to Zakim to get some stuff but they shot at him and now sit by me unable to move.
Blood on the streets
“The past 700 days were the deadliest, killings, bombing, starvation, you see blood seething on the streets, laying bodies of martyrs, people with no legs or arms”.
It has been an extremely difficult 700 days for a woman with the responsibility of looking after three children. “How do I cope, how do I make ends meet. My husband went before my eyes, in front of his kids, I saw, my kids saw an incredible sight of their father spluttering on the wall and now that image never leaves me nor them.
In this 700 days you lost a brother, a relative, a friend as you were forced to move from one place to another in between charities, water queues, cutting wood and all the rest of it. I just can’t describe it,” said one young man.
Sullen future
“For me, my future has perished, gone up in flames, I could have been working by now, having just finished university, but I live in a 4 by 6 tent with nothing to look forward, searching for morsels of food and hewing water, carrying buckets of water not just today but everyday, said a young lady.
Nothing is for certain. The people of Gaza, as of yet, have nothing to look forward to but more slaughter. There is a nagging fleeing, frequently made by Israeli ministers, that the aim is to push these people dubbed at around two million to other countries.
But the Gazans, still after two years of slaughter and going to the third, say they are not leaving Gaza except as dead bodies.
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