By Nidal al-Mughrabi
CAIRO (Reuters) – The United Nations Palestinian refugee agency called on Tuesday 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 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 social media platform 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.
The call came as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel looking for ways of reviving attempts to reach a ceasefire in Gaza, following the death of former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar almost a week ago.
Washington has called on Israel to allow more humanitarian supplies into northern Gaza and Israel says it has allowed scores of aid trucks in as well as facilitating air drops but Palestinian health officials say no aid has reached them and the situation is extremely difficult.
On Tuesday, health officials said more than 20 people had been killed by Israeli forces.
Palestinian health officials and the civil emergency service said dozens of bodies of people killed by Israeli fire were scattered on roads 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 launched an offensive against Hamas militants holding out in the nearby town of Jabalia this month, says it is evacuating people along designated routes and has filtered out dozens of militants from civilians going south.
Israeli drones circled overhead calling on Palestinians to evacuate areas around the town of Beit Lahiya, close to the border line where an offensive that started around the nearby area of Jabalia to the south began earlier this month.
Many Palestinians fear the evacuation of northern towns is part of an Israeli plan to clear the area of its population to create a buffer zone that will enable Israel to control Gaza after the war.
The military denies the evacuations are part of any wider plan, saying it is moving people to separate them from Hamas fighters but the wider strategic picture remains unclear since the death of Sinwar removed one of Israel’s main obstacles.
It said troops had dismantled tunnels and other infrastructure in Beit Lahiya and local people said fighting appeared to be confined to hit-and-run attacks by small groups of Hamas militants, “not actual fighting or equal combat,” one Palestinian in the area said via WhatsApp.
The armed wings of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad said they have attacked forces with anti-tank rockets and mortar fire.
The death toll in Israel’s operation in Gaza is approaching 43,000, according to the latest health ministry figures issued on Tuesday and the enclave lies in ruins, with most of the 2.3 million population displaced, many in makeshift shelters.
The Israeli operation was triggered by the attack by Hamas-led gunmen who rampaged through communities around the Gaza Strip on Oct, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 as hostages into Gaza.
(Reporting and writing by Nidal al-Mughrabi)
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