According to the head of the UN human rights office in the Palestinian Territories, the extent of the suffering of Gaza residents “must be seen to be truly understood.”
The Gaza Strip has descended into anarchy, with rising famine, widespread looting and increasingly frequent rapes in refugee camps, while public order has collapsed, people said on Friday. November from United Nations officials.
The scale of the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza “must be seen to be truly understood”, said Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN human rights office in the Palestinian Territories, after his latest visit to Gaza.
“I was particularly alarmed by the level of hunger,” Ajith Sunghay said at a press briefing in Geneva, by video conference from Amman.
“The breakdown of public order and security is exacerbating the situation, with widespread looting and struggles over scarce resources,” he testified.
“The anarchy in Gaza, about which we sounded the alarm months ago, is here,” he said, stressing that the predictable situation could have been avoided.
A “horrible” situation
Ajith Sunghay said young women, many of whom have been displaced repeatedly, have reported a lack of safe spaces and privacy in their makeshift tents.
“Some say that cases of gender-based violence and rape, child abuse and other forms of violence in refugee camps have increased, due to war and the breakdown of law and order,” he said. he added.
Ajith Sunghay described the situation in Gaza City as “horrible”, with thousands of displaced people sheltering in “inhumane conditions, with severe food shortages and terrible sanitary conditions”.
He said he saw, for the first time, dozens of Gazan women and children rummaging through waste from giant landfills.
The level of destruction in Gaza “is only getting worse”, he added. “Everyone I have met is asking for an end to this situation. Enough,” he said.
“The killings must stop”
He said UN aid to the estimated 70,000 people still living in northern Gaza was being hampered by “repeated obstacles or rejections of humanitarian convoys by Israeli authorities.”
“It is absolutely obvious that massive humanitarian aid needs to arrive – and that is not the case,” he lamented.
The spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Jeremy Laurence, called for an immediate ceasefire. “The killings must stop,” he said. “The hostages must be released immediately and unconditionally. Those arbitrarily detained must be released.”
“Every effort must be made to urgently provide all the food, medicine and life-saving aid that Gaza desperately needs,” he insisted.
The Hamas attack led to the death of 1,207 people on the Israeli side, the majority civilians killed on October 7, 2023, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures and including hostages who died or were killed in captivity in the Gaza Strip.
Israel's retaliatory war has killed 44,330 people in Gaza, the majority civilians, according to data from the Hamas government's Health Ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.
