Rapid displacement of million Gazans is worsening health crisis, UN says

The UN and other aid agencies have been warning the assault on the city is having catastrophic consequences.

Mr Lazzarini said Unrwa had to stop health and other services in Rafah and said his agency had only been able to pick up 450 trucks of supplies entering Gaza over the past three weeks

“This is nothing in the face of the needs,” he said.

World Health Organization chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said fighting had “severely crippled” healthcare provision in Rafah where he said tens of thousands of vulnerable people were still present.

He said the UAE field hospital in Rafah city was the “only facility in the area providing health services” but was “increasingly difficult to reach due to hostilities”.

There was also only one fully functional field hospital in the al-Mawasi area, he said.

He called for the Rafah crossing to be reopened saying its closure was making it harder to get supplies and staff into Gaza.

The Rafah crossing in southern Gaza, which had been the main entry point of aid entering via Egypt, has been closed after Israel took control of the Palestinian side of the crossing in early May.

The Hamas-run health ministry also said the continued closure of the Rafah crossing meant severely wounded Palestinians could not be evacuated for potentially lifesaving treatment abroad. Some 25,000 wounded Palestinians needed treatment abroad, it said.

Israel says it is facilitating the entry of aid through the other point of entry in southern Gaza, Kerem Shalom. On Monday Cogat, the Israeli defence ministry body that coordinates humanitarian aid to Gaza, insisted that the Gaza side of Kerem Shalon was “at full capacity”, with “the content of over 1,000 aid trucks waiting to be picked up by UN aid agencies”.

However insecurity has meant the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom crossing has at times been too dangerous to access, the UN has said.

On Tuesday the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said access constraints “continue to undermine the safe delivery of life-saving humanitarian assistance throughout Gaza”, and conditions “further deteriorated” in May.