UN demands to evacuate 10,000 Palestinians from Gaza for treatment, warnings of environmental disaster

The World Health Organization said that more than 10,000 people need to be evacuated and receive medical care outside the Gaza Strip, due to the ongoing Israeli attacks on the Strip, amid fears of the spread of diseases due to the accumulation of garbage near the tents of the displaced.

"More than 10,000 people need to be evacuated and receive medical care outside Gaza," World Health Organization spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said in a press conference on Friday, noting that "6,000 of them are suffering from shock, and more than 2,000 are suffering from chronic diseases."

Yasarevic stated, “Since the closure of the Rafah crossing, no medical evacuation operation was carried out until yesterday, Thursday, as 21 children with cancer were evacuated,” and the UN official called for “the reopening of the Rafah crossing and any other border crossing to remove patients so that their lives remain safe.”

On Thursday, 21 sick and wounded Palestinians left the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom commercial crossing (south), which is under Israeli control, to receive treatment abroad, under the coordination of the World Health Organization. Before that, on Sunday, 6 children left the Gaza Strip through the same crossing to receive treatment abroad.

In turn, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, welcomed the medical evacuation from Gaza, and called for “facilitating medical evacuation through all possible crossings, including Rafah and Kerem Shalom, to Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and from there to other countries.” , calling for “sustainable, safe, timely, transparent and organized” medical evacuations.

Garbage pile

In the context, an official from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said that piles of garbage estimated to weigh about 100,000 tons are accumulating near the tents of the displaced in central Gaza.

“The situation is getting worse,” she warned. “As temperatures rise, it really increases the misery of the population as well as the living conditions here.”

She said Israel had repeatedly refused requests to allow UNRWA to empty its main waste collection sites, meaning temporary sites were being created. "Even if Israel were to agree to these requests now, UNRWA's humanitarian missions, such as garbage collection, would have been halted by Israel's refusal to allow fuel imports," she said.

For his part, Yasarevic said that garbage, along with high temperatures, lack of clean drinking water, and sanitation services, increase the risk of disease, noting that about 470,000 cases of diarrhea have been recorded since the beginning of the war.

Since last October 7, 2023, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza with absolute American support, leaving more than 124,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing amid massive destruction and famine that claimed the lives of dozens of children.

Israel continues its war despite two UN Security Council resolutions calling for an immediate halt, and orders from the International Court of Justice to end the invasion of the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, take measures to prevent acts of "genocide", and improve the dire humanitarian situation in the Strip.