AT LEAST ten people in a school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), located in the Rimal District west of Gaza City, were killed in an Israeli air strike yesterday.
The building was sheltering displaced persons who had fled the fighting in other sections of the embattled Gaza Strip.
It came under fire by the Israel Occupation Forces (IOF) the day after the USA/UK called for all funding for the humanitarian organisation to cease.
UNRWA announced yesterday that only four out of 22 of its health centres in the Gaza Strip are operational due to Israeli bombardment and access restrictions.
Last week, UNRWA had six operational health centres in Gaza.
Before the start of the Israeli war at the beginning of last October, UNRWA provided basic services, from medical care to education, to Gaza’s 2.2 million residents.
The agency is now supplying aid to desperate people there and using its facilities to shelter those fleeing Israeli raids.
In a statement yesterday, Gaza’s Hamas government said the occupying regime is trying to undermine UNRWA and other organisations providing humanitarian relief in Gaza.
Following Israeli accusations against UNRWA, several countries, including the US and the UK, suspended funding for the agency, in a move condemned by Palestinian officials.
The head of UNRWA said on Sunday that cutting the ‘lifeline’ that two million people in Gaza depend on is a ‘collective punishment’.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the loss of funding meant the UN could not guarantee aid to Gaza for February.
He also pleaded for donor states to continue supporting the UN agency, adding: ‘The dire needs of the desperate populations they serve must be met.’
Hamas slammed the suspension of funding for UNRWA, calling it a dangerous decision aimed at liquidating the issue of Palestinian refugees.
The Hamas Movement’s Mass Action Department in Lebanon said in a statement yesterday that the sudden and abrupt decision by a number of countries to stop funding UNRWA would subsequently lead to the cessation of all health, educational and relief services the UN agency provides for Palestinian refugees.
‘The suspension decision came in conjunction with the International Court of Justice’s ruling which confirmed that Israel uses methods that are tantamount to genocide, which indicates that funding suspension contributes to the genocide in Gaza and that these decisions are conspiratorial against our people and their rights,’ Hamas added.
Hamas called on the UN to provide UNRWA with all the requirements to continue to serve the refugees in Gaza, warning that any decline or reduction in services would affect the refugees’ future especially in Lebanon, as it would escalate the suffering of the Palestinian people there and worsen their economic and social conditions.
