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Critical humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip through the Rafah border crossing will not take place on Friday because of a collapse in telecom services, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said.
A lack of fuel to the besieged strip shut down all internet and phone networks on Thursday, the main Palestinian telecom provider said.
“We have seen fuel and food and water and humanitarian assistance being used as a weapon of war,” Juliette Touma, the UNRWA communications director, told reporters in Amman, Jordan.
Touma said UNRWA can’t operate because it has no fuel, and “It is simply outrageous that humanitarian agencies are reduced to begging for fuel.”
Israel did provide UNRWA with limited fuel this week for the delivery of food, she said. No other infrastructure, like hospitals or water treatment plants, was allowed to use the fuel.
The first truck carrying fuel entered Gaza a day ago, and UNRWA said it was the “equivalent of half a truck! Not at all enough.”
More than 11,400 Palestinians — two-thirds of them women and minors — have been killed since the war began, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in the West Bank, which has taken over tallying deaths in Gaza as the Hamas-led ministry in the enclave stopped publishing the information due to lack of fuel and connectivity.
Neither of the Palestinian health ministries differentiate between civilian and militant deaths. Hamas is designated a terror organization by Israel, the EU, Germany, the US and others.
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