UNICEF faces challenges getting ‘simple materials’ into the Gaza Strip
UNICEF spokesperson Tess Ingram tells Al Jazeera the agency continues to face challenges in transporting materials into the Palestinian enclave and her colleagues have reported the UN children’s agency is still unable to provide recreational and stationary kits to children so they can resume learning after 10 months of no school.
She said UNICEF is trying to get in vaccinations to fight against polio after the virus was detected in sewage. It is also trying to bring in supplies like medicines, hygiene kits and construction equipment to help rebuild toilets.
Ingram explained that UNICEF had been able to access the central and northern Gaza Strip recently and the teams there had reported “increasing outbreaks” of various diseases, including scabies.
“Parents are trying to do whatever they can to treat rashes by boiling water with lemon and putting that on their children in the absence of having the proper medicine from health care centres,” she said.
UN condemns ‘increasing frequency’ of Israeli attacks on schools
The UN Human Rights Office has said that the Israeli attack on al-Tabin school in Gaza City earlier today was “conducted with apparent disregard for the high rate of civilian fatalities”.
“This is at least the 21st strike on a school, each serving as a shelter, that the UN Human Rights Office has recorded since July 4,” the OHCHR said in a statement.
“These strikes have resulted in at least 274 fatalities, including women and children.
“Despite [Israeli army] statements that all measures are taken to avoid civilian harm, the repeated strikes on IDP shelters in areas to which the populations have been forced to move, and the consistent and predictable impact on civilians, suggest a failure to strictly comply with obligations required by International Humanitarian Law.”
“The UN Human Rights Office condemns the Israeli Defense Force’s strikes on Al Tabae’en School in Gaza City which resulted in an initial report of at least 93 Palestinians killed, including 11 children and 6 women. The majority of fatalities seem to have been inside the mosque in…
— UN Human Rights Palestine (@OHCHR_Palestine) August 10, 2024
‘I feel sick’ after Israel’s continued assault on Gaza, says UN expert
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur to the occupied Palestinian territories, has said she “feel[s] sick” about the Israeli strike on a school earlier today, which killed more than 100 people.
“A journalist asked me how I ‘feel’ about Gaza today. How am I supposed to feel in the face of a Western-sponsored army relentlessly butchering people trapped in what resembles a circle of Dante’s Hell [Inferno]? I feel sick,” she wrote in a post on X.
