UN says humanitarian aid to North Gaza largely blocked for two months

Humanitarian aid to North Gaza, where Israel launched a ground offensive on October 6, has largely been blocked for the past 66 days, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

That has left between 65,000 and 75,000 Palestinians without access to food, water, electricity or health care, according to the UN.

In the north, Israel has continued its siege on Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya with Palestinians living there largely denied aid, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

Recently, it said, about 5,500 people were forcibly displaced from three schools in Beit Lahiya to Gaza City.

Adding to the food crisis, only four UN-supported bakeries are operating throughout the Gaza Strip, all of them in Gaza City, OCHA said.

Sigrid Kaag, the senior UN humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, told reporters after briefing the UN Security Council behind closed doors on Tuesday that civilians trying to survive in Gaza face an “utterly devastating situation.”

She pointed to the breakdown in law and order and looting that has exacerbated a very dire situation and left the UN and many aid organisations unable to deliver food and other humanitarian essentials to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in need.

Ms Kaag said she and other UN officials keep repeatedly asking Israel for access for convoys to North Gaza and elsewhere, to allow in commercial goods, to reopen the Rafah crossing from Egypt in the south and to approve dual-use items.

The UN has established the logistics for an operation across Gaza, she said, but there is no substitute for political will that humanitarians do not possess.

“Member states possess it,” Ms Kaag said, urging Security Council members and the broader international community to address Gaza’s worsening humanitarian crisis.

Israel’s UN Mission said it had no comment on Ms Kaag’s remarks.