Head of UN Palestinian refugee agency blocked from entering Gaza

UNRWA Director Filippo Lazzarini

Cairo:

The head of the United Nations’ Palestinian refugee agency said on Monday that Israel had blocked him from entering the war-torn and besieged Gaza Strip, where the United Nations warned of impending famine.

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini told a joint news conference in Cairo with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry that he “had planned to enter Rafah today but was informed that my entry was blocked. reject”.

Lazzarini later wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that he had been denied entry by “Israeli authorities,” but there was no immediate comment from Israel.

The U.N. agency responsible for coordinating nearly all aid to Gaza has been in crisis since Israel accused about a dozen of its 13,000 Gaza employees of involvement in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

This led to several donor countries, including the United States, suspending funding, although some of these countries later resumed or increased funding, including Spain, Canada and Australia.

Israeli authorities did not respond to AFP’s request for comment, but government spokesman Avi Heyman earlier on Monday reiterated what he called Israel’s position that “UNRWA is a front for Hamas”.

Shoukry said Cairo “fully supports” the agency and criticized “actions to unilaterally restrict UNRWA funding due to baseless accusations.”

The Hamas attack on October 7 killed about 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip has killed at least 31,726 people, mostly women and children, according to the region’s health ministry.

“Man-made hunger”

According to the latest UNRWA figures, 168 employees were among the dead.

Lazzarini said on Monday that the United Nations had “paid a huge price in Gaza.”

“More than 150 of our facilities in the Gaza Strip have been completely destroyed,” he said.

“A number of our staff have been arrested and subjected to abuse and humiliation during investigations.”

After more than five months of war and siege, the humanitarian situation in Gaza has deteriorated to the point where the United Nations has repeatedly warned that famine is imminent.

“This is man-made hunger,” Lazzarini said.

Gaza’s health ministry has recorded at least 27 deaths from malnutrition and dehydration in recent weeks, most of them children.

The United Nations said on Monday that half of the territory’s 2.4 million people were experiencing “catastrophic hunger and famine”.

Humanitarian aid operations have intensified in recent weeks, including airdrops and efforts to establish a maritime humanitarian corridor from Cyprus, but the United Nations and other aid agencies have warned these will not be enough to meet Gaza’s urgent needs.

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