Geneva (UNA/QNA) - The United Nations confirmed that the Israeli occupation forces are “systematically” preventing aid from reaching the residents of the Gaza Strip, who are in dire need of it, which complicates the task of bringing aid into a war zone that is not subject to any law.
Jens Laerke, spokesman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said that it has become almost impossible to carry out operations to evacuate the sick and wounded, and to deliver aid in northern Gaza, and the matter is also becoming more difficult in the southern Strip.
Laerke referred to an incident that occurred last Sunday when a convoy organized by the World Health Organization and the Palestinian Red Crescent to evacuate patients from the besieged Al-Amal Hospital in the southern city of Khan Yunis was prevented for seven hours, and a number of paramedics were detained.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said it would suspend its operations in Gaza for 48 hours; Because the Israeli entity failed to ensure the safety of its emergency medical teams.
Laerke explained to reporters in Geneva that “despite prior coordination of all employees and vehicles with the Israeli side, Israeli forces stopped the convoy led by the World Health Organization the moment it left the hospital, and prevented it from moving for several hours.”
He added, “The Israeli army forced the patients and employees out of the ambulances and stripped all the paramedics of their clothes,” noting that the convoy was carrying 24 patients, including a pregnant woman, a mother, and a newborn child, and was forced to leave 31 other patients in Al-Amal Hospital, which has stopped operating. Work after being subjected to forty attacks last month alone, which resulted in the deaths of at least 25 people.
A spokesman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said: “The failure to provide adequate facilities for the delivery of aid throughout Gaza means that humanitarian workers are exposed to an unacceptable and avoidable risk of arrest, injury, or worse.”
In recent weeks, the Israeli occupation forces prevented all aid convoys planned to be sent to the north. The last aid allowed in was on January 23, according to the World Health Organization.
