GAZA CITY: UN aid workers stepped up calls yesterday for an urgent Gaza ceasefire, warning that spiralling violence endangered their ability to respond to the needs of the 1.8 million affected population.
The head of UNICEF’s field office in Gaza, Anne-Claire Dufay, said that renewed hostilities were threatening the delivery of aid to hundreds of thousands of children with acute needs.
“We urgently need a few hours of ceasefire per day so we can provide support to affected children and families,” Dufay said.
Work to repair infrastructure damaged during the six-week war between Israel and Hamas has temporarily halted since hostilities resumed on Tuesday as truce talks unravelled, she said.
Unicef teams had also had their movement restricted, Dufay said.
“In the current context we should at least have a few hours a day for a humanitarian ceasefire corridor,” she said.
Ramesh Rajasingham, head of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Gaza and the West Bank, said there was an “urgent need for an immediate ceasefire”.
The number of displaced Palestinians has risen to 435,000, the UN says, since truce talks collapsed in Cairo and Hamas resumed rocket attacks on Israel and warplanes retaliated.
AFP
