The eight-month closure of Gaza has created "grim and miserable" conditions that deprive Gazans of their basic dignity, the UN's top humanitarian affairs official said during a visit, urging that the territory's borders be reopened.
Meanwhile, medical officials said yesterday that the death toll in a mysterious explosion at a Gaza refugee camp has risen from six to eight. Friday's blast in the house of Ayman Atallah Fayed, a senior Islamic Jihad activist, killed him, his wife, three of his sons and three neighbors, said Moawiya Hassanain, a Health Ministry official. At least 40 people were wounded, 12 of them critically, including one of Fayed's daughters.
Hamas police said the cause was not clear, while Islamic Jihad blamed an Israeli airstrike and threatened revenge attacks.
PHOTO: AFP
The Israeli military denied it carried out an airstrike in the Bureij camp.
UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes toured Gaza's largest hospital, speaking with dialysis patients and inspecting the neonatal unit, and then visited an industrial zone that once employed 1,800 Palestinians but has been idled by the border closure.
Israel and Egypt severely restricted access to Gaza after the Islamic militants seized the territory by force in June. Since then, only a few dozen trucks carrying food, medicine and other basics have been permitted into Gaza every day, while most exports are banned.
The closure has driven up poverty and unemployment, and the UN says some 80 percent of Gaza's 1.4 million people now get some food aid.
"All this makes for a grim human and humanitarian situation here in Gaza, which means that people are not able to live with the basic dignity to which they are entitled," Holmes told reporters in Gaza.
The extent of suffering in Gaza has been a subject of dispute. Palestinians and human rights groups say hardship is widespread, while Israeli government officials have accused Hamas of trying to manufacture a humanitarian crisis for political gain.
Holmes' four-vehicle convoy, marked by blue UN flags, drove through potholed, muddy streets without a Hamas police escort.
It was Holmes' first visit to Gaza as humanitarian affairs chief, part of a four-day trip that also includes a a stop in the Israeli town of Sderot, hit hard by continued rocket fire from Gaza.
The UN envoy started the day at Gaza City's Shifa Hospital, where administrators told him they were worried about a possible breakdown of overburdened generators and that they needed spare parts for medical machinery, such as dialysis machines.
In recent weeks, rolling blackouts of several hours a day have been the norm in Gaza, a result of reduced fuel shipments by Israel, which says it is trying to pressure Gaza militants to halt rocket fire into Israel. So far, generators have kept hospitals going during power cuts.
"No freedom, no freedom," Zaher Shabat, the wife of dialysis patient Ahmed Shabat, told Holmes after trying to squeeze all her woes into a brief conversation. She told him she has 10 children and that with her husband unemployed, it was tough for him to spend money on trips to the hospital every other day.
"I'll do my best," Holmes told her before being taken to the next patient.
At Gaza's main cargo crossing, closed since June, Holmes was briefed by Wadie al-Masri, general manager of the Karni industrial zone which employed 1,800 before the closure.
Al-Masri told Holmes that Israel must significantly increase the number of truckloads allowed into Gaza, from about 50 to at least 200 a day, just to meet basic needs.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not