'Please save Gaza, I beg you. It's dying': staff working with UN agency for Palestine refugees issue desperate appeals for help
Gaza Strip as «catastrophic» amidst Israeli bombardment and appealed for immediate supplies of food, water and medicines for children, pregnant women and elderly in their shelters.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has issued an emergency appeal to support Palestinian refugees in Gaza, saying that hundreds of thousands of Palestine refugees are suffering the consequences of the heavy escalation in violence on the Gaza Strip.
«Please save Gaza, I beg you, save Gaza.
It's dying. It's dying. It's dying,» Rawya Halas, head of the UNRWA shelter in Khan Younis, Gaza, said in a video posted by UNRWA on the site X on Sunday.
Since the unprecedented attack on Israel by Hamas militants on October 7, the Israeli military has warned 1.1 million Palestinians living in north Gaza to evacuate south, and thousands of families have been fleeing by vehicle or on foot.
«There are children, elderly and adults for whom I cannot provide. I am UNRWA.
I'm the head of the shelter and I cannot offer them anything, neither food nor water.»
In the video, Halas makes an emotional appeal for help, the desperation and sadness in her voice of not being able to provide essential medicines and food to the refugees in the shelter, palpable.
«The situation we are in now is unprecedented and cannot be described with words,» Halas said in the video adding that 15,000 Palestinian refugees are in the shelter. «They left their homes without food or drink.»
She said that in the shelter, there are people who have diabetes, disabled babies and some children who have now contracted smallpox.
