WAM
Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said that the repeated mass evacuation orders issued by the Israeli military in Gaza are radically shrinking the space in which aid workers can operate and depriving war-weary Palestinians of desperately needed relief items and health care.
“Humanitarian operations are ongoing ‘where feasible’,” according to the OCHA spokesperson, considering that only 11 per cent of the territory of the Gaza Strip is not under evacuation orders.
He told journalists in Geneva that since last Friday, the Israeli military has issued three new evacuation orders for over 19 neighbourhoods in northern Gaza and in Deir Al-Balah, “with more than 8,000 people staying in these areas, many sheltering in displacement sites.”
“That actually brings to 16 the number of mass evacuation orders that have been issued in the month of August alone,” he stressed.
According to OCHA, Gazans from areas affected by evacuation orders are “increasingly forced to concentrate within the Israeli-designated zone in Al Mawasi,” which spans about 41 square kilometres and lacks critical infrastructure and basic services.
Aid delivery in the area is “limited due to access and security issues” while severe overcrowding, with the population density reaching up to 34,000 individuals per square kilometre, compounds the dire health and sanitary conditions.
Laerke said that in central Gaza’s Deir Al-Balah city, the evacuation orders have displaced UN humanitarian staff, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and service providers along with their families.
The OCHA spokesperson highlighted concerns from humanitarians on the ground about an order issued Sunday for a part of Deir Al-Balah, affecting 15 premises hosting UN and NGO aid workers, four UN warehouses, Al Aqsa hospital, two clinics, three wells, one water reservoir and one desalination plant.
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