UNWRA chief calls for temporary truce in northern Gaza

The UN Palestinian refugee agency has called for a temporary truce to allow people to leave areas of northern Gaza as health officials said they were running out of supplies to treat patients hurt in a three-week-old Israeli offensive.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UNRWA relief agency, said on Tuesday that the humanitarian situation had reached a dire point, with bodies abandoned by roadsides or buried under rubble.

"In northern Gaza, people are just waiting to die," he said in a statement on X. "They feel deserted, hopeless and alone."

"I am calling for an immediate truce, even if for a few hours, to enable safe humanitarian passage for families who wish to leave the area & reach safer places," he said.

Blinken visit

The call came as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel to try to revive Gaza ceasefire talks following the killing last week of Yahya Sinwar, leader of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas that runs the enclave.

Washington has called on Israel to allow more humanitarian supplies into northern Gaza and Israel claims aid has been delivered in scores of trucks as well as air drops but Gaza medics say the aid has not reached them.

On Tuesday, Gaza health officials said more than 20 people had been killed by Israeli forces. Dozens of bodies of people killed by Israeli fire were on roadsides and under rubble. Rescue teams could not reach them because of ongoing strikes, they said.

"Many wounded have died before our eyes and we couldn't do anything for them," said Munir Al-Bursh, the director of the Gaza Health Ministry, who is currently in northern Gaza.

"Hospitals also ran out of coffins to prepare the dead and we have asked people to donate any fabric they have at home," he said in a statement.

The Israeli military, which besieged the northern town of Jabalia this month, says it is evacuating people along designated routes.

Israeli drones circled overhead, demanding Palestinians to evacuate areas around the town of Beit Lahiya, just north of Jabalia where the offensive began earlier this month.

Many Palestinians fear the evacuation orders are part of an Israeli plan to clear the area to create a buffer zone that will enable Israel to control Gaza after the war.

The armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad said they have attacked Israeli forces with anti-tank rockets and mortar fire.

Gaza knocked back by 70 years

The war in Gaza has devastated the Palestinian economy, which is now 35 percent smaller than it was at the start of Israel's invasion a year ago, the United Nations' development agency said on Tuesday.

UNDP said quality of life indicators such as health and education had been knocked back 70 years to the 1950s.

In northern Gaza, residents said Israeli forces had besieged hospitals, schools, and other shelters housing displaced families and ordered them to leave and head south. They said forces detained dozens of men.

Footage obtained by Reuters showed dozens of residents fleeing their area, carrying some of their belongings.

Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, said medical services had completely collapsed.

"There are no blood units or tubes to drain bleeding from the chest. Most of the medical supplies are not available," he said in a statement.

"People around the hospital are being asked to evacuate, and those who evacuated were shot on the way...the situation is more than catastrophic."

The death toll in more than a year of war in Gaza is approaching 43,000, according to the latest health ministry figures, and most of the 2.3 million population is displaced, many in makeshift shelters.

The Israeli offensive started after the Hamas-led blitz on Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages into Gaza.