2024-05-03 01:40:48
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs quoted the Palestinian Civil Defense on Wednesday as saying that more than 10,000 people were missing under the rubble as a result of Israeli raids in the Gaza Strip.
The office said that the Palestinian Civil Defense faces enormous challenges in recovering bodies, including a lack of equipment, heavy machinery, and personnel, warning that it may take up to three years to recover bodies using the primitive tools available to them.
A few days ago, the spokesman for the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, Medhat Abbas, explained that at the beginning of the war, the Strip had hospitals, civil defense teams that retrieved people trapped under the rubble, and systems for counting victims, adding that “all of that collapsed,” according to what was reported by the New York Times. “.
Abbas points out that to estimate the death toll, the ministry now relies heavily on other sources of information, such as testimonies from relatives of the dead, videos of the aftermath of the raids, and reports from media organizations.
It seems that the true picture of the war’s human losses will take a long time to emerge, as estimates indicate that thousands of people are still buried under the rubble and in unmarked graves, according to local health authorities, witnesses and United Nations teams.
There is not enough heavy machinery to remove the rubble, in addition to a significant shortage of fuel to operate the machines that are already available, according to the New York Times.
About 57 percent of buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed since the start of the war, according to an analysis of satellite data by remote sensing experts at the City University of New York and Oregon State University.
The United Nations says it will take many years and hundreds of millions of dollars to move the rubble that has accumulated so far. There were warnings about diseases that could be transmitted by unburied corpses.
There are about 180,000 people who suffered from upper respiratory infections, while 136,400 cases of diarrhea were recorded, half of them in children under the age of five, and there were 55,400 cases of lice and scabies, 5,330 cases of chickenpox, and 42,700 cases of skin rashes, including 4,722 cases of herpes.
Epidemiologists estimate that these conditions could cause the death of more than 85,000 Palestinians within a few months due to injuries, diseases, and lack of medical care, deaths that would not have been expected had it not been for the war, according to a New York Times report.
UN humanitarian workers have renewed their warning of the ongoing devastating impact of the war in Gaza and the need to ensure reliable supply lines to provide aid to the people who need it most in the Strip.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that relief organizations continue to face a number of restrictions on accessing those in need of assistance across Gaza, including rejection of planned missions or prolonged delays at Israeli military checkpoints on roads north and south of the Gaza Strip.
He explained that more than a quarter of the humanitarian missions to northern Gaza in April were obstructed by the Israeli authorities, and 10 percent of them were rejected outright, and that the office continues to work with partners in the humanitarian field to expand the scope of assistance operations whenever and wherever possible.
Last updated: May 2, 2024 – 09:08
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2024-05-03 01:40:48