US pause on funding UN's main Palestinian relief agency may become permanent
Updated Wed, March 13, 2024
Displaced Palestinians wait to receive United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) aid, in Rafah
By Humeyra Pamuk and Simon Lewis
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. officials are preparing for a pause on funding the main U.N. agency for Palestinians to become permanent due to opposition in Congress, even as the Biden administration insists the aid group's humanitarian work is indispensable.
The U.S., along with more than a dozen countries, suspended its funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in January after Israel accused 12 of the agency's 13,000 employees in Gaza of participating in the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
The U.N. has launched an investigation into the allegations, and UNRWA fired some staff after Israel provided the agency with information on the allegations.
The U.S., which is UNRWA's largest donor, providing $300 million to $400 million annually, said it wants to see the results of that inquiry and corrective measures taken before it will consider resuming funding.
Even if the pause is lifted, only about $300,000 - what is left of already appropriated funds - would be released to UNRWA. Anything further would require congressional approval.
Bipartisan opposition in Congress to funding UNRWA makes it unlikely the U.S. will resume regular donations anytime soon, even as countries such as Sweden and Canada have said they will restart their contributions.
A supplemental funding bill in the U.S. Congress that includes military aid to Israel and Ukraine contains a provision that would block UNRWA from receiving funds if it becomes law. President Joe Biden's administration supports the bill.
U.S. officials say they recognize "the critical role" UNRWA plays in distributing aid inside the densely-populated enclave that has been brought close to famine by Israel's assault during the past five months.
"We have to plan for the fact that Congress may make that pause permanent," State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters on Tuesday.
Washington has been looking at working with humanitarian partners on the ground, such as UNICEF and the World Food Programme (WFP), to continue giving aid.
But officials are aware that UNRWA is hard to replace.
"There are other organizations that are now providing some distribution of aid inside Gaza, but that is primarily the role that UNRWA is equipped to play that no one else is due to their longstanding work and their networks of distribution and their history inside Gaza," Miller said.
'UNRWA IS A FRONT'
A few Democrats in the U.S. Senate, including Senator Chris Van Hollen, along with some progressive members in the U.S. House of Representatives, have opposed an indefinite ban on funding to UNRWA.
But any new funding would need the support of at least some Republicans, who hold a majority in the House. Many have expressed their opposition to UNRWA.
"UNRWA is a front, plain and simple," Representative Brian Mast, the Republican chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability, said in a statement.
"It masquerades as a relief organization while building the infrastructure to support Hamas ... It is literally funneling American tax dollars to terrorism," Mast said.
Asked for comment on Mast's claims, UNRWA Director of Communications Juliette Touma said an independent review led by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna is assessing the "measures that UNRWA has in place with regards to the neutrality of the agency, its staff and programs."
"We encourage member states, individuals and entities to share any information about accusations against UNRWA with the investigation, or with the ongoing review, to look into them," Touma said.
UNRWA was established in 1949 by a U.N. General Assembly resolution after the war that followed Israel's founding, when 700,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes.
Today it directly employs 30,000 Palestinians, serving the civic and humanitarian needs of 5.9 million descendants of those refugees, in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and in vast camps in neighboring Arab countries.
In Gaza, UNRWA runs the enclave's schools, its primary healthcare clinics and other social services, and distributes humanitarian aid.
William Deere, director of UNRWA's Washington Representative Office, told Reuters that U.S. support accounts for one-third of UNRWA's budget.
"That's going to be very hard to overcome," he said. "Please remember that UNRWA is more than Gaza. It's health care and education and social services. It's East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon."
Fighters from Hamas, which administers Gaza, killed 1,200 people in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and took 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies, an assault that sparked one of the bloodiest wars in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israel's retaliatory military campaign on the densely populated enclave has killed more than 31,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza authorities, while infrastructure has been obliterated and hundreds of thousands are now close to famine.
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Simon Lewis; additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Don Durfee, Michael Perry and Paul Simao)
Gaza war: UNRWA says Rafah aid centre hit by Israeli forces
David Gritten - BBC News
Wed, March 13, 2024
UNRWA said up to 60 people were believed to have been working at its Rafah distribution centre when it was hit
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees says a member of staff was killed and 22 others were injured when Israeli forces hit a food distribution centre in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said attacks on its facilities had "become commonplace in blatant disregard to international humanitarian law".
The Hamas-run health ministry said an Israeli air strike killed five people.
The Israeli military said it killed a Hamas commander in a "precise strike".
It identified him as Mohammed Abu Hasna and alleged that he had been a "combat support operative" in Hamas's military wing in the Rafah area.
A man with that name was on a list of five fatalities given by health officials.
Rafah is crammed with an estimated 1.5 million Palestinians who are seeking shelter from Israel's ground offensive elsewhere in Gaza.
The UN's secretary general has warned that a threatened Israeli assault on the city could "plummet the people of Gaza into an even deeper circle of hell".
The war in Gaza began when Hamas gunmen attacked southern Israel on 7 October, killing about 1,200 people and taking 253 others as hostages.
More than 31,200 people have been killed in Gaza in the military campaign that Israel launched in response, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Gaza medics tell BBC that Israeli troops beat and humiliated them
Inside the US plan to get food into Gaza by sea
'My son Ali has already died': Father's plea for Gaza's starving children
Wednesday's strike reportedly hit the eastern side of the UNRWA food distribution centre, which is in the eastern part of Rafah.
UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma told the BBC that up to 60 people were believed to have been working at the facility, which also served as a warehouse for food and other critical supplies.
"We know that it is the Israeli forces who were responsible. Our teams were on site and they reported back the casualties," she said.
Pictures of the aftermath showed a pool of blood in a courtyard outside a blue-and-white painted warehouse, and another pool just inside the doorway of the building, next to boxes of aid.
A 15-year-old boy and four men aged between 27 and 50, one of them called Mohamed Abu Hasna, were reported killed.
People were also filmed at a local hospital next to the bodies of five people, one of whom was a man wearing a blue UN tabard.
"It's a UNRWA centre, expected to be secure," UNRWA staff member Sami Abu Salim told the AFP news agency as he surveyed the damage.
"Some came to work to distribute aid to the people in need of food during the [Islamic] holy month of Ramadan. Suddenly, they were struck by two missiles."
An estimated 1.5 million Palestinians are sheltering in Rafah with scarce access to safe drinking water or food
On Wednesday evening, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) put out a statement saying its aircraft had "precisely targeted and eliminated a terrorist in Hamas's Operations Unit in the area of Rafah, Mohammed Abu Hasna", without mentioning the UNRWA facility.
"He was also involved in taking control of humanitarian aid and distributing it to Hamas terrorists," it added.
"Furthermore, [Abu] Hasna co-ordinated the activities of various Hamas units, as well as communicated with and activated Hamas field operatives. [Abu] Hasna was also responsible for an intelligence operations room which provides information on IDF positions for use in Hamas attacks."
Mr Lazzarini said: "Today's attack on one of the very few remaining UNRWA distribution centres in the Gaza Strip comes as food supplies are running out, hunger is widespread and, in some areas, turning into famine."
"Every day, we share the co-ordinates of all our facilities across the Gaza Strip with parties to the conflict. The Israeli army received the co-ordinates including of this facility yesterday."
UNRWA says at least 165 of its 13,000 employees in Gaza have been killed and more than 150 of its facilities have been hit since the start of the war.
More than 400 people have also been killed while seeking shelter under the UN flag, according to the agency.
Israel has accused UNRWA of supporting Hamas, which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the UK, US and other countries.
The agency has denied this, but in January it sacked nine of the 12 employees accused in an Israeli document of playing a part in the 7 October attacks.
The UN has yet to publish the results of an internal investigation launched as the US and other donors paused funding in response to the allegations.
5 Palestinians killed after shelling at UN aid distribution center in Rafah, Gaza
ELLIE KAUFMAN
Wed, March 13, 2024
Scroll back up to restore default view.
Five Palestinians were killed on Wednesday at the U.N. aid distribution center in Rafah, the southern Gaza city bordering Egypt, the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health said. This distribution center is run by United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA), the main U.N. agency operating inside of Gaza.
The Gaza Ministry of Health said the U.N. distribution center was hit by shelling. ABC News has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces for comment on the attack.
Philippe Lazzarini, the Commissioner-General of the UNWRA, called for an "independent inquiry" into violations against the Israeli military’s targeting of U.N. sites in Gaza.
"Every day, we share the coordinates of all our facilities across the Gaza Strip with parties to the conflict. The Israeli Army received the coordinates including of this facility yesterday," Lazzarini said in a post on X (formally known as Twitter) after the attack.
"The @UN, its personnel, premises and assets must be protected at all times. Since this war began, attacks against UN facilities, convoys and personnel have become commonplace in blatant disregard to international humanitarian law," he added. "I am calling once again for an independent inquiry into these violations and the need for accountability."
Aid agencies estimate there are now 1.4 million people, or two-thirds of Gaza's total population, displaced in this small town that borders Egypt. All are competing for the scant resources available amid the Israel-Hamas war.
ZIONIST DISINFORMATION
Israel accuses UNRWA head of 'lying' on supplies to Gaza Strip
DPA
Tue, March 12, 2024
Palestinians inspect the damage to one of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) buildings in Gaza City. COGAT, the authority coordinating Israeli government activities in the Palestinian territories, accused Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, of "lying" in a post he made on X on Monday evening alleging that Israeli authorities are preventing essential supplies from reaching the Gaza Strip. Omar Ishaq/dpaMore
The Israeli authorities have rejected allegations by UN officials that they are preventing essential supplies from reaching the Gaza Strip.
COGAT, the authority coordinating Israeli government activities in the Palestinian territories, accused Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, the agency providing aid to the Palestinian Territories, of "lying" in a post he made on X on Monday evening.
In the post, Lazzarini claimed that items, including medical scissors, were now on a long list of banned items that the Israeli authorities were classifying as "dual use." An entire population depended on humanitarian assistance for survival, he said. "Very little comes in & restrictions increase," the UNRWA head added.
Responding early on Tuesday, also on X, COGAT posted in remarks addressed directly to Lazzarini: "Lying is a sign of desperation, this did not happen."
COGAT continued: "Over 16,000 trucks entered Gaza, with only 1.5% not permitted. Most were re-coordinated and entered later. Your info sources are wrong. We are constantly in touch with UN orgs and haven't heard a word about it."
Israel says air strike on Gaza UN food centre killed Hamas militant
Updated Wed, March 13, 2024
A suspected attack at a checkpoint outside of Jerusalem, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank
By Nidal al-Mughrabi, Bassam and Masoud
CAIRO/GAZA (Reuters) -Israel said on Wednesday its airstrike on a U.N. food distribution centre in southern Gaza killed a Hamas commander whom it targeted, and Palestinian health officials said it killed four more people including a U.N. worker.
The Israeli military said the strike killed Mohammad Abu Hasna, whom it described as a Hamas militant who provided intelligence to the group on Israeli troops' positions and was "also involved in taking control of humanitarian aid and distributing it to Hamas terrorists."
In a statement, Hamas said Abu Hasna was a member of its police force and condemned his killing as a "cowardly assassination" meant to disrupt aid distribution.
Hamas identified another of the five killed as the head of an emergency committee for Rafah, Nidal al-Sheikh Eid.
The main U.N. agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) said one of its facilities had been hit in Rafah, an area in southern Gaza where more than half of Gaza's 2.3 million population is sheltering.
At least one UNRWA staff member was among the five killed and 22 others were injured, the agency said, adding that the facility's coordinates had been shared with the Israeli military.
"Today’s attack on one of the very few remaining UNRWA distribution centres in the Gaza Strip comes as food supplies are running out, hunger is widespread and, in some areas, turning into famine," said UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini.
Hamas has denied Israel's accusations that it diverts food aid and says Israel is using famine to pressure the Palestinian population.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday he was determined to have UNRWA replaced by other agencies without harming aid distribution, citing alleged links between the agency and Hamas militants.
In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a news briefing said he had not yet received details of the incident but said Israel must protect safety of humanitarian workers despite tough conditions.
"You're in a war zone. You have a terrorist group that is firing from hospitals, from schools, from apartment buildings, but the Israeli military, the Israeli government have a responsibility and an obligation to do everything possible to ensure that the humanitarians can do their jobs," said Blinken.
AID EFFORTS
With the Gaza war now in its sixth month, The U.N. has warned that at least 576,000 people in Gaza – one-quarter of the population – are on the brink of famine and global pressure has been growing on Israel to allow more access to the enclave.
On Tuesday, the United Nations used a new land route to deliver food to northern Gaza for the first time in three weeks.
"We have been taking efforts to facilitate more aid into northern Gaza," Israeli government spokesperson Tal Heinrich told journalists on Wednesday. "This was a pilot to prevent Hamas from taking over the aid as they often do."
The U.S., Jordan and others have conducted airdrops of aid in Gaza and on Tuesday a ship carrying 200 tonnes of aid left Cyprus in a pilot project to open a sea corridor to deliver supplies. While U.N. officials have welcomed new aid routes, they stress there is no substitute for land access.
The war began when Hamas fighters attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and seizing 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Israel then launched an air, sea and ground assault that has killed more than 31,000 Palestinians, health authorities in Hamas-run Gaza say.
Since the Gaza war began, violence has also risen in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, with stepped up Israeli military raids and Palestinian street attacks.
On Wednesday, Israeli officials said a 15-year-old Palestinian stabbed a soldier and a guard at a checkpoint between the West Bank and Jerusalem before being shot dead.
In separate incidents, Israeli forces killed two Palestinians during a raid in Jenin, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA said, while a 13-year-old Palestinian was killed by Israeli forces on the outskirts of Jerusalem, in what Israeli police described as a violent riot.
(Additional reporting by Raneen Sawafta in Jenin, Henriette Chacar in Jaffa and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem and Humeyra Pamuk in Washington; Writing by Cynthia Osterman; Editing by Timothy Heritage, Gareth Jones and David Gregorio)
Updated Wed, March 13, 2024
Displaced Palestinians wait to receive United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) aid, in Rafah
By Humeyra Pamuk and Simon Lewis
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. officials are preparing for a pause on funding the main U.N. agency for Palestinians to become permanent due to opposition in Congress, even as the Biden administration insists the aid group's humanitarian work is indispensable.
The U.S., along with more than a dozen countries, suspended its funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in January after Israel accused 12 of the agency's 13,000 employees in Gaza of participating in the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
The U.N. has launched an investigation into the allegations, and UNRWA fired some staff after Israel provided the agency with information on the allegations.
The U.S., which is UNRWA's largest donor, providing $300 million to $400 million annually, said it wants to see the results of that inquiry and corrective measures taken before it will consider resuming funding.
Even if the pause is lifted, only about $300,000 - what is left of already appropriated funds - would be released to UNRWA. Anything further would require congressional approval.
Bipartisan opposition in Congress to funding UNRWA makes it unlikely the U.S. will resume regular donations anytime soon, even as countries such as Sweden and Canada have said they will restart their contributions.
A supplemental funding bill in the U.S. Congress that includes military aid to Israel and Ukraine contains a provision that would block UNRWA from receiving funds if it becomes law. President Joe Biden's administration supports the bill.
U.S. officials say they recognize "the critical role" UNRWA plays in distributing aid inside the densely-populated enclave that has been brought close to famine by Israel's assault during the past five months.
"We have to plan for the fact that Congress may make that pause permanent," State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters on Tuesday.
Washington has been looking at working with humanitarian partners on the ground, such as UNICEF and the World Food Programme (WFP), to continue giving aid.
But officials are aware that UNRWA is hard to replace.
"There are other organizations that are now providing some distribution of aid inside Gaza, but that is primarily the role that UNRWA is equipped to play that no one else is due to their longstanding work and their networks of distribution and their history inside Gaza," Miller said.
'UNRWA IS A FRONT'
A few Democrats in the U.S. Senate, including Senator Chris Van Hollen, along with some progressive members in the U.S. House of Representatives, have opposed an indefinite ban on funding to UNRWA.
But any new funding would need the support of at least some Republicans, who hold a majority in the House. Many have expressed their opposition to UNRWA.
"UNRWA is a front, plain and simple," Representative Brian Mast, the Republican chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability, said in a statement.
"It masquerades as a relief organization while building the infrastructure to support Hamas ... It is literally funneling American tax dollars to terrorism," Mast said.
Asked for comment on Mast's claims, UNRWA Director of Communications Juliette Touma said an independent review led by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna is assessing the "measures that UNRWA has in place with regards to the neutrality of the agency, its staff and programs."
"We encourage member states, individuals and entities to share any information about accusations against UNRWA with the investigation, or with the ongoing review, to look into them," Touma said.
UNRWA was established in 1949 by a U.N. General Assembly resolution after the war that followed Israel's founding, when 700,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes.
Today it directly employs 30,000 Palestinians, serving the civic and humanitarian needs of 5.9 million descendants of those refugees, in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and in vast camps in neighboring Arab countries.
In Gaza, UNRWA runs the enclave's schools, its primary healthcare clinics and other social services, and distributes humanitarian aid.
William Deere, director of UNRWA's Washington Representative Office, told Reuters that U.S. support accounts for one-third of UNRWA's budget.
"That's going to be very hard to overcome," he said. "Please remember that UNRWA is more than Gaza. It's health care and education and social services. It's East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon."
Fighters from Hamas, which administers Gaza, killed 1,200 people in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and took 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies, an assault that sparked one of the bloodiest wars in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israel's retaliatory military campaign on the densely populated enclave has killed more than 31,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza authorities, while infrastructure has been obliterated and hundreds of thousands are now close to famine.
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Simon Lewis; additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Don Durfee, Michael Perry and Paul Simao)
Gaza war: UNRWA says Rafah aid centre hit by Israeli forces
David Gritten - BBC News
Wed, March 13, 2024
UNRWA said up to 60 people were believed to have been working at its Rafah distribution centre when it was hit
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees says a member of staff was killed and 22 others were injured when Israeli forces hit a food distribution centre in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said attacks on its facilities had "become commonplace in blatant disregard to international humanitarian law".
The Hamas-run health ministry said an Israeli air strike killed five people.
The Israeli military said it killed a Hamas commander in a "precise strike".
It identified him as Mohammed Abu Hasna and alleged that he had been a "combat support operative" in Hamas's military wing in the Rafah area.
A man with that name was on a list of five fatalities given by health officials.
Rafah is crammed with an estimated 1.5 million Palestinians who are seeking shelter from Israel's ground offensive elsewhere in Gaza.
The UN's secretary general has warned that a threatened Israeli assault on the city could "plummet the people of Gaza into an even deeper circle of hell".
The war in Gaza began when Hamas gunmen attacked southern Israel on 7 October, killing about 1,200 people and taking 253 others as hostages.
More than 31,200 people have been killed in Gaza in the military campaign that Israel launched in response, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Gaza medics tell BBC that Israeli troops beat and humiliated them
Inside the US plan to get food into Gaza by sea
'My son Ali has already died': Father's plea for Gaza's starving children
Wednesday's strike reportedly hit the eastern side of the UNRWA food distribution centre, which is in the eastern part of Rafah.
UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma told the BBC that up to 60 people were believed to have been working at the facility, which also served as a warehouse for food and other critical supplies.
"We know that it is the Israeli forces who were responsible. Our teams were on site and they reported back the casualties," she said.
Pictures of the aftermath showed a pool of blood in a courtyard outside a blue-and-white painted warehouse, and another pool just inside the doorway of the building, next to boxes of aid.
A 15-year-old boy and four men aged between 27 and 50, one of them called Mohamed Abu Hasna, were reported killed.
People were also filmed at a local hospital next to the bodies of five people, one of whom was a man wearing a blue UN tabard.
"It's a UNRWA centre, expected to be secure," UNRWA staff member Sami Abu Salim told the AFP news agency as he surveyed the damage.
"Some came to work to distribute aid to the people in need of food during the [Islamic] holy month of Ramadan. Suddenly, they were struck by two missiles."
An estimated 1.5 million Palestinians are sheltering in Rafah with scarce access to safe drinking water or food
On Wednesday evening, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) put out a statement saying its aircraft had "precisely targeted and eliminated a terrorist in Hamas's Operations Unit in the area of Rafah, Mohammed Abu Hasna", without mentioning the UNRWA facility.
"He was also involved in taking control of humanitarian aid and distributing it to Hamas terrorists," it added.
"Furthermore, [Abu] Hasna co-ordinated the activities of various Hamas units, as well as communicated with and activated Hamas field operatives. [Abu] Hasna was also responsible for an intelligence operations room which provides information on IDF positions for use in Hamas attacks."
Mr Lazzarini said: "Today's attack on one of the very few remaining UNRWA distribution centres in the Gaza Strip comes as food supplies are running out, hunger is widespread and, in some areas, turning into famine."
"Every day, we share the co-ordinates of all our facilities across the Gaza Strip with parties to the conflict. The Israeli army received the co-ordinates including of this facility yesterday."
UNRWA says at least 165 of its 13,000 employees in Gaza have been killed and more than 150 of its facilities have been hit since the start of the war.
More than 400 people have also been killed while seeking shelter under the UN flag, according to the agency.
Israel has accused UNRWA of supporting Hamas, which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the UK, US and other countries.
The agency has denied this, but in January it sacked nine of the 12 employees accused in an Israeli document of playing a part in the 7 October attacks.
The UN has yet to publish the results of an internal investigation launched as the US and other donors paused funding in response to the allegations.
5 Palestinians killed after shelling at UN aid distribution center in Rafah, Gaza
ELLIE KAUFMAN
Wed, March 13, 2024
Scroll back up to restore default view.
Five Palestinians were killed on Wednesday at the U.N. aid distribution center in Rafah, the southern Gaza city bordering Egypt, the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health said. This distribution center is run by United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA), the main U.N. agency operating inside of Gaza.
The Gaza Ministry of Health said the U.N. distribution center was hit by shelling. ABC News has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces for comment on the attack.
Philippe Lazzarini, the Commissioner-General of the UNWRA, called for an "independent inquiry" into violations against the Israeli military’s targeting of U.N. sites in Gaza.
"Every day, we share the coordinates of all our facilities across the Gaza Strip with parties to the conflict. The Israeli Army received the coordinates including of this facility yesterday," Lazzarini said in a post on X (formally known as Twitter) after the attack.
"The @UN, its personnel, premises and assets must be protected at all times. Since this war began, attacks against UN facilities, convoys and personnel have become commonplace in blatant disregard to international humanitarian law," he added. "I am calling once again for an independent inquiry into these violations and the need for accountability."
Aid agencies estimate there are now 1.4 million people, or two-thirds of Gaza's total population, displaced in this small town that borders Egypt. All are competing for the scant resources available amid the Israel-Hamas war.
ZIONIST DISINFORMATION
Israel accuses UNRWA head of 'lying' on supplies to Gaza Strip
DPA
Tue, March 12, 2024
Palestinians inspect the damage to one of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) buildings in Gaza City. COGAT, the authority coordinating Israeli government activities in the Palestinian territories, accused Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, of "lying" in a post he made on X on Monday evening alleging that Israeli authorities are preventing essential supplies from reaching the Gaza Strip. Omar Ishaq/dpaMore
The Israeli authorities have rejected allegations by UN officials that they are preventing essential supplies from reaching the Gaza Strip.
COGAT, the authority coordinating Israeli government activities in the Palestinian territories, accused Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, the agency providing aid to the Palestinian Territories, of "lying" in a post he made on X on Monday evening.
In the post, Lazzarini claimed that items, including medical scissors, were now on a long list of banned items that the Israeli authorities were classifying as "dual use." An entire population depended on humanitarian assistance for survival, he said. "Very little comes in & restrictions increase," the UNRWA head added.
Responding early on Tuesday, also on X, COGAT posted in remarks addressed directly to Lazzarini: "Lying is a sign of desperation, this did not happen."
COGAT continued: "Over 16,000 trucks entered Gaza, with only 1.5% not permitted. Most were re-coordinated and entered later. Your info sources are wrong. We are constantly in touch with UN orgs and haven't heard a word about it."
Israel says air strike on Gaza UN food centre killed Hamas militant
Updated Wed, March 13, 2024
A suspected attack at a checkpoint outside of Jerusalem, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank
By Nidal al-Mughrabi, Bassam and Masoud
CAIRO/GAZA (Reuters) -Israel said on Wednesday its airstrike on a U.N. food distribution centre in southern Gaza killed a Hamas commander whom it targeted, and Palestinian health officials said it killed four more people including a U.N. worker.
The Israeli military said the strike killed Mohammad Abu Hasna, whom it described as a Hamas militant who provided intelligence to the group on Israeli troops' positions and was "also involved in taking control of humanitarian aid and distributing it to Hamas terrorists."
In a statement, Hamas said Abu Hasna was a member of its police force and condemned his killing as a "cowardly assassination" meant to disrupt aid distribution.
Hamas identified another of the five killed as the head of an emergency committee for Rafah, Nidal al-Sheikh Eid.
The main U.N. agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) said one of its facilities had been hit in Rafah, an area in southern Gaza where more than half of Gaza's 2.3 million population is sheltering.
At least one UNRWA staff member was among the five killed and 22 others were injured, the agency said, adding that the facility's coordinates had been shared with the Israeli military.
"Today’s attack on one of the very few remaining UNRWA distribution centres in the Gaza Strip comes as food supplies are running out, hunger is widespread and, in some areas, turning into famine," said UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini.
Hamas has denied Israel's accusations that it diverts food aid and says Israel is using famine to pressure the Palestinian population.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday he was determined to have UNRWA replaced by other agencies without harming aid distribution, citing alleged links between the agency and Hamas militants.
In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a news briefing said he had not yet received details of the incident but said Israel must protect safety of humanitarian workers despite tough conditions.
"You're in a war zone. You have a terrorist group that is firing from hospitals, from schools, from apartment buildings, but the Israeli military, the Israeli government have a responsibility and an obligation to do everything possible to ensure that the humanitarians can do their jobs," said Blinken.
AID EFFORTS
With the Gaza war now in its sixth month, The U.N. has warned that at least 576,000 people in Gaza – one-quarter of the population – are on the brink of famine and global pressure has been growing on Israel to allow more access to the enclave.
On Tuesday, the United Nations used a new land route to deliver food to northern Gaza for the first time in three weeks.
"We have been taking efforts to facilitate more aid into northern Gaza," Israeli government spokesperson Tal Heinrich told journalists on Wednesday. "This was a pilot to prevent Hamas from taking over the aid as they often do."
The U.S., Jordan and others have conducted airdrops of aid in Gaza and on Tuesday a ship carrying 200 tonnes of aid left Cyprus in a pilot project to open a sea corridor to deliver supplies. While U.N. officials have welcomed new aid routes, they stress there is no substitute for land access.
The war began when Hamas fighters attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and seizing 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Israel then launched an air, sea and ground assault that has killed more than 31,000 Palestinians, health authorities in Hamas-run Gaza say.
Since the Gaza war began, violence has also risen in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, with stepped up Israeli military raids and Palestinian street attacks.
On Wednesday, Israeli officials said a 15-year-old Palestinian stabbed a soldier and a guard at a checkpoint between the West Bank and Jerusalem before being shot dead.
In separate incidents, Israeli forces killed two Palestinians during a raid in Jenin, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA said, while a 13-year-old Palestinian was killed by Israeli forces on the outskirts of Jerusalem, in what Israeli police described as a violent riot.
(Additional reporting by Raneen Sawafta in Jenin, Henriette Chacar in Jaffa and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem and Humeyra Pamuk in Washington; Writing by Cynthia Osterman; Editing by Timothy Heritage, Gareth Jones and David Gregorio)
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