UNICEF official tells of ‘utter annihilation’ after travelling length of Gaza
Destruction in Khan Younis
Jason Burke reports in The Guardian on 22 March 2024:
An aid official who travelled the length of Gaza this week has described scenes of “utter annihilation”, with “nothing left” of what were once thriving and crowded cities in the territory.
“The depth of the horror surpasses our ability to describe it,” said James Elder, a spokesperson with the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef).
“As soon as you drive through the north, you get that universal gesture of hunger of people putting their hands to their mouths. A lot of children, women with very gaunt faces. In [the city of] Khan Younis, there is utter annihilation.
“I’ve not seen that level of devastation in 20 years with the UN. People’s coping capacity in the north has been smashed and in the south it is hanging by a thread,” Elder said in an interview on Friday.
Elder said that he saw a dozen “skeletal” children at Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia in the north of Gaza. “We are seeing severe malnutrition cases … Children who are on the brink of death, just skin and bones … and these are the ones who have managed to get to hospital. There is a real fear for those that can’t,” Elder said. “This is man-made and preventable.”
Medical staff at the hospital worked 36-hour shifts and then joined their families to search for clean water, food or shelter, Elder said.
The comments come amid increasingly frantic diplomatic activity aimed at ending hostilities in Gaza and allowing “a flood” of aid to reach the territory after nearly six months of war, during which supplies of basic necessities have been drastically cut.
A report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification initiative(IPC) this week warned that any escalation of the war could push half of Gaza’s total population to the brink of starvation within months. Famine is imminent in northern Gaza, where 70% of people are experiencing catastrophic hunger, the IPC said.