GAZA (Palestine Foundation Information Center) The UN World Food Program (WFP) has expressed its fears that southern Gaza could soon see the same catastrophic levels of hunger recorded previously in the north, warning that the situation in the south is quickly deteriorating.
“A million people have been pushed out of Rafah and are trapped in a highly congested area along the beach in the burning summer heat. We drove through rivers of sewage,” WFP deputy executive director, Carl Skau, said on Friday at the end of a two-day mission to the coastal enclave.
Skau said that there was some improvement in delivering aid supplies in northern Gaza, but it stressed the need for sustaining and scaling up assistance in the area, calling access to clean water, healthcare, fuel for bakeries, and medical supplies “essential.”
The WFP official stressed that “more than anything people want this war to end, and so do we.”
He said WFP would now look at how to support the functioning of markets and also get cash to people so that they can begin to restore their lives.
“Emergency assistance is still critical, but we also need to start instilling some hope – by supporting bakeries and markets – and go beyond meeting food needs for survival to support water sanitation and basic health care needs,” he added.
“Only this way can we help restore a more dignified form of assistance that goes beyond meeting basic food needs. On my previous visit in November, the people I met were angry. Now they are exhausted and just wanted this war to end,” he said.
