By Olivia Le Poidevin
GENEVA (Reuters) -The head of the U.N. Palestinian Refugee Agency said on Tuesday that its staff, as well as doctors and humanitarian workers, were fainting on duty in Gaza due to hunger and exhaustion.
UNRWA said it had received dozens of emergency messages from its staff describing grave conditions and exhaustion in the enclave, where Israel has been fighting a war against Hamas since October, 2023.
“No one is spared: caretakers in Gaza are also in need of care. Doctors, nurses, journalists and humanitarians are hungry,” UNRWA commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini said in a statement, shared by his spokesperson at a press briefing in Geneva.
“Many are now fainting due to hunger and exhaustion while performing their duties: reporting atrocities or alleviating some of the suffering.”
Lazzarini also criticised a U.S.-backed aid distribution scheme run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation that has been supplying aid since late May, when Israel, which controls supplies into Gaza, lifted an 11-week blockade.
“The so called ‘GHF’ distribution scheme is a sadistic death trap. Snipers open fire randomly on crowds as if they are given a licence to kill,” Lazzarini said.
The GHF uses private U.S. security and logistics companies and largely bypasses a U.N.-led system, that Israel alleges has let Hamas-led militants loot aid shipments intended for civilians. Hamas denies the allegation.
More than 1,000 people have been reported killed while trying to receive food aid since the end of May, according to UNRWA estimates, Lazzarini said.
The U.N. said on July 15 it had recorded at least 875 killings within the past six weeks at aid points in Gaza run by the GHF and convoys run by other relief groups. The majority of those killed were in the vicinity of GHF sites, while the remaining 201 were killed on the routes of other aid convoys.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry, GHF and COGAT, the Israeli military aid coordination agency, were not immediately available for comment. GHF has previously told Reuters that such incidents have not occurred on its sites and accused the U.N. of misinformation, which it denies.
(Reporting by Olivia Le PoidevinEditing by Madeline Chambers and Sharon Singleton)
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