ENSURE OUR SAFETY AND WE WILL FEED GAZANS, SAYS UN
▶ Food agency head tells The National it has supplies for 2.2 million Palestinians, as famine looms
More than 2 million hungry Gazans can be fed by the UN – provided security is guaranteed, World Food Programme executive director Cindy McCain has told The National.
In an exclusive interview, the head of the world’s largest humanitarian organisation said the UN was ready to supply food to Palestinians in the besieged enclave, but had been unable to deliver it due to the lack of security guarantees.
This comes amid reports of Palestinians reduced to eating animal feed, and warnings from humanitarian groups – including the WFP – that millions face starvation, as Israel continues its military operation in Gaza.
“We have food supplies at the border and will be able to scale up to feed 2.2 million people across Gaza. But we must have security guarantees and sustained access to deliver safely,” Ms McCain said on Thursday.
This year, the WFP has only been able to deliver five aid convoys to northern Gaza – which bore the brunt of the first months of war.
The UN’s World Health Organisation said only three of its 11 planned missions to the north were carried out amid security concerns and rejections of permits.
The UN estimates 300,000 people are still living in northern areas that are largely cut off from assistance, and face a growing risk of famine, Ms McCain said. All Gazans face severe hunger, she added.
Israeli forces continued their ground offensive in Gaza on Thursday. Troops stormed Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis and ordered patients and medical staff to leave the top floors.
Intensive care unit patients – including babies – were moved, said Gaza’s Health Ministry.
It said the hospital had been turned into a “military site”.
At least 10 people inside Nasser Hospital have been killed by Israeli troops over the past week, despite assurances of safe passage, the ministry said.
At least seven members of a single family, including a child, were killed in an Israeli strike that hit a tower block in Nabatieh, southern Lebanon.
The Israeli military said it had carried out air strikes on Wednesday night that killed several Hezbollah fighters, including Ali Mohammed Al Debs, a commander of the group’s elite Radwan Force.
Hezbollah later confirmed the deaths of three of its fighters, including Mr Al Debs, without giving their ranks.
Early on Thursday, a Civil Defence spokesman in Nabatieh said his team was “still working” to establish a final toll for dead and wounded.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency said the civilians killed were members of the Berjawi family. As rescue efforts continued into Thursday afternoon, clothes, mattresses and other items belonging to the family lay on the ground near the badly damaged building.
The strike caused severe damage to the three-storey building and a nearby road, the National News Agency reported. Cars and telephone lines were also damaged.
Footage filmed at the scene immediately after the attack showed ambulance crews rushing to clear rubble and searching for injured people.
Abou Ibrahim, who lives in a neighbouring building, said many residents had left the area, but he had no plans to abandon his home.
“Today the town was empty and people are in shock, but tomorrow, inshallah, it will return to normal,” he said.
Hussein, a cousin of one of those killed, said rescue teams had heard a voice in the rubble.
“I’m waiting to see what will happen,” he told The National.
Schools and government institutions in Nabatieh announced on Thursday that they would close, “given the security conditions resulting from the repeated Israeli attacks, and out of concern for the safety of employees and stakeholders”, the National News Agency reported.
The attack brought the day’s civilian death toll in southern Lebanon to 10, making it the deadliest day for the region since Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah began exchanging artillery fire across the border in October.
A wave of strikes earlier on Wednesday killed a woman and two of her children in the village of Sawaneh on the border.
Hezbollah promised retaliation for the civilian deaths.
Israel continued to fire across the border on Thursday, as Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the escalation.
“At a time where we are insisting on calm and are calling on all sides to not escalate, we find the Israeli enemy extending its aggression,” his office said.
Hezbollah began cross-border strikes on October 8 to deter Israel from its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The clashes have mostly been confined to the Lebanon-Israel border area. However, in recent weeks, Israel has struck further into Lebanese territory.
On Wednesday evening, caretaker Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi voiced fear that “war is getting closer to the heart of Lebanese territory”.
At least 254 people have been killed on the Lebanese side of the border, mostly Hezbollah fighters but also including 38 civilians, AFP says.
The Israeli military says 10 soldiers and six civilians have been killed on its side of the border.
The war in Gaza began on October 7, when Hamas killed about 1,200 people and took 240 hostages in an attack on southern Israeli communities.
Israel responded with an air and ground campaign in the enclave, which Gaza’s Health Ministry says has killed more than 28,600 people.
Video taken at the scene of the strike showed ambulance crews rushing to clear rubble and find injured people