PARIS: Veteran aid worker Jean-Pierre Delomier said he has seen it all responding to conflicts and disasters worldwide over the decades, but the Gaza war is by far “the worst.”
Returning from an eight-day mission to the south of the besieged Palestinian territory, the deputy director of Handicap International — Humanity & Inclusion (HI) said he was still “stunned.”
He told AFP he had never seen such a combination of “bombardment of an extremely densely populated and closed-off area, and a near-complete lack of access for humanitarian aid.”
Deliveries into the Gaza Strip have been reduced substantially since the start of the latest Israeli military campaign in the territory, sparked by Palestinian militant group Hamas carrying out a deadly attack in Israel on October 7.
The United Nations has warned of looming famine, and calls have grown for the Israeli authorities to let in and ensure the safe delivery of desperately needed aid waiting in lorries on the Egyptian side of the border.
“I saw kilometers (miles) of trucks queueing on four lanes, all waiting to get into Gaza,” said 61-year-old Delomier.
Foreign governments have scrambled to parachute in pallets of supplies from airplanes in recent weeks, but aid workers have warned they only cover a tiny fraction of needs and the method is hugely expensive.
“Planes fly over to drop a few pallets, whereas just behind (the border) there are kilometers of pallets waiting that could just be let in,” he said, incensed.
The aid worker, who started his career in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s, said what he witnessed in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah was incomparable.
About 1.5 million of the territory’s 2.4 million residents have crammed into Rafah, squashed up against the closed Egyptian border, most after fleeing Israeli bombardment on other parts of the territory.
When food is available, restrictions make it extremely expensive.
And Israel air strikes have repeatedly hit the city.
Gazans, Delomier said, were caught in a “mousetrap, with only a trickle of aid — whereas all that is needed is right there next door — and bombardment.”
He said people sometimes tried to compare the situation in Gaza with the 1994 Rwanda genocide, the Syrian civil war since 2011, or even the ongoing conflict in Yemen.
But the crisis in Gaza “is the worst I have ever seen,” he said.
The territory has been under an Israeli blockade since 2007, when Hamas took control of it, prompting rights groups to say Gazans were trapped in an “open-air prison” even before the latest conflict.
Five months of war have ravaged the territory, and sparked unprecedented alarm among aid groups.
The latest Gaza war broke out after Hamas launched their attack on southern Israel, resulting in about 1,160 deaths, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
The militants also took around 250 hostages. Israel believes 99 of them remain alive in Gaza and that 31 have died.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 30,800 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory. HI says around 90 percent of those killed were civilians.
Delomier said he worked in Rafah with the constant buzz of Israeli drones overhead.
“There was artillery fire and then, especially the constant buzzing of drones. The whole time, day and night, a permanent background noise,” he said.
Further north, conditions are even more dire and some residents have been reduced to eating animal fodder.
The United Nations on Tuesday called on the international community to “flood” Gaza with aid, after reports children are dying of starvation there.
Delomier said he was still reeling from what he saw of the situation.
“In fact, I am outraged,” he said.
Veteran aid worker says Gaza crisis ‘worst’ of his career
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Veteran aid worker says Gaza crisis ‘worst’ of his career
- Returning from an eight-day mission to the south of the besieged Palestinian territory, the deputy director of HI, said he was still “stunned”
- “I saw kilometers (miles) of trucks queueing on four lanes, all waiting to get into Gaza,” said 61-year-old Delomier
Flow of Sudan war refugees puts Chad camp under strain
- Chad has taken in more than 770,000 of them, according to the UN refugee agency — with many more likely on their way
IRIBA, Chad: Nadjala Mourraou held her haggard two-year-old son in her henna-tattooed hands for the medics to examine. Then came the painful diagnosis: little Ahma, like many of his fellow Sudanese refugees, was severely malnourished.
The pair were toward the front of a long line snaking out of the doctors’ tent at an already overcrowded refugee camp in east Chad, creaking under the strain as more and more people fleeing the civil war across the nearby border with Sudan turn up.
“We’re suffering from a lack of food,” complained the mother, who fled the fighting in Nyala, in Sudan’s South Darfur region, with Ahma more than a year ago.
Since their arrival at the Touloum camp, Mourraou added that all she and Ahma had to eat each day was a bowl of assida, a porridge made from sorghum.
Yet, as with other conditions at the camp, this meagre ration could deteriorate further as the war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces drags on.
Besides killing tens of thousands, the two-year conflict has uprooted 13 million people, more than three million of whom have fled the country as refugees.
Chad has taken in more than 770,000 of them, according to the UN refugee agency — with many more likely on their way.
Between 25,000 and 30,000 Sudanese refugees already live in the makeshift sheet metal and white canvas tents, packed together across the arid Touloum camp, according to sources.
Recently, more and more of them have become malnourished, said Dessamba Adam Ngarhoudal, a nurse with medical charity Doctors Without Borders, or MSF.
“Out of 100 to 150 daily consultations, nearly half of them deal with cases of malnutrition,” said the 25-year-old medic.
The worst cases are sent to the Iriba district hospital, around half an hour’s drive away.
But the hospital was powerless to stop the first Sudanese infant dying of malnutrition under its care.
“Since the beginning of the month, we have already exceeded the capacity of the malnutrition ward at the hospital,” said MSF nurse Hassan Patayamou recently.
“And we expect admissions to continue to rise as the hot season progresses and temperatures rise above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).”
With the fighting set to grind on, Chad’s government fears the number of Sudanese refugees in the country could soon reach nearly a million.
That burden would be too heavy for impoverished Chad to bear alone, argues the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
The refugee agency was seeking $409 million in aid to help the Sahel country — only 14 percent of which it had received by the end of February.
“The Chadian people have a tradition of welcoming their Sudanese brothers in distress,” said Djimbaye Kam-Ndoh, governor of Wadi Fira province where the Touloum camp is located.
“But the province’s population has practically doubled, and we’re asking for major support.”
Humanitarian groups are worried about the impact of US President Donald Trump’s move to freeze America’s foreign aid budget, while other donors, notably in Europe, have also made cuts to their financing.
“Hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake,” Alexandre Le Cuziat, the UN’s World Food Programme deputy director in Chad, said in a phone call.
Nearly 25 million people are suffering from acute food insecurity in Sudan itself, according to the WFP.
And with the rainy season just under two months away, medics fear outbreaks of diseases.
“We’re preparing for an explosion of cases of malnutrition and malaria,” said Samuel Sileshi, emergencies services coordinator for MSF in Central Darfur state.
“This year, we are also facing measles epidemics in Darfur,” he said.
That unhealthy cocktail of diseases, he warned, “could have devastating consequences,” not least for children.
WFP says has depleted all its food stocks in Gaza
- Entry of all humanitarian aid has been blocked by Israel since March 2
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: The UN’s World Food Programme on Friday warned it has depleted all its food stocks in war-ravaged Gaza, where the entry of all humanitarian aid has been blocked by Israel since March 2.
“Today, WFP delivered its last remaining food stocks to hot meals kitchens in the Gaza Strip. These kitchens are expected to fully run out of food in the coming days,” WFP said in a statement.
Sudan violence ‘may amount to crimes against humanity’: UK
- Lammy called on the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to “de-escalate urgently“
- “Last week, the UK gathered the international community in London to call for an end to the suffering of the Sudanese people”
LONDON: Violence in Sudan’s Darfur region shows “the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing and may amount to crimes against humanity,” UK foreign minister David Lammy said.
Lammy called on the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to “de-escalate urgently” and said in a statement issued late Thursday that Britain would continue to “use all tools available to us to hold those responsible for atrocities to account.”
Paramilitary shelling of the besieged city of El-Fasher, the state capital of North Darfur, has killed more than 30 civilians and wounded dozens more, activists said on Monday.
El-Fasher is the last major city in the vast Darfur region that still remains in army control.
Lammy said that reports of the violence in and around El-Fasher were “appalling.”
“Last week, the UK gathered the international community in London to call for an end to the suffering of the Sudanese people.
“Yet some of the violence in Darfur has shown the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing and may amount to crimes against humanity,” he said.
He called on the RSF to “halt its siege of El-Fasher,” adding that “the warring parties have a responsibility to end this suffering.”
Lammy also urged the Sudanese Armed Forces to allow safe passage for civilians to reach safety.
International aid agencies have long warned that a full-scale RSF assault on El-Fasher could lead to devastating urban warfare and a new wave of mass displacement.
UNICEF has described the situation as “hell on earth” for at least 825,000 children trapped in and around El-Fasher.
Hundreds of Syrian Druze clerics head to Israel on pilgrimage
- Hundreds of clerics from Syria’s Druze minority on Friday are heading to Israel where they will conduct a pilgrimage to a sacred shrine, the second such visit since longtime ruler Bashar Assad’s
DAMASCUS: Hundreds of clerics from Syria’s Druze minority on Friday are heading to Israel where they will conduct a pilgrimage to a sacred shrine, the second such visit since longtime ruler Bashar Assad’s ouster.
The clerics from the esoteric, monotheistic faith, are to cross the border on foot, according to a Syrian official and a local news organization, despite Israel and Syria being technically at war.
The delegation will visit the Nabi Shuaib shrine in north Israel’s Galilee region, where an annual pilgrimage is held from April 25-28 each year.
Abu Yazan, the official from Hader on the Syrian Golan Heights, said that 400 clerics from his town and from the Damascus suburb of Jaramana will head to Israel after the Israeli authorities gave their approval.
Asking not to be identified by his full name, he said the trip was “purely religious” in nature.
Suwayda24, a news organization from nearby Sweida province, said some 150 Druze clerics from that area would also participate.
The group notified the Syrian government of its plan to go to Israel, though it received no response, the website added.
Unlike during a smaller visit to the shrine last month, the clerics will spend the night in Israel this time.
Abu Yazan, who is one of the participants, said that “we requested to stay for a week to visit the shrine” and other members of the religious community “but the Israeli side only authorized one night.”
The Druze are mainly divided between Syria, Israel and Lebanon.
They account for about three percent of Syria’s population and are heavily concentrated in the south.
Israel seized much of the strategic Golan Heights from Syria in a war in 1967, later annexing the area in 1981 in a move largely unrecognized by the international community.
After Islamist-led forces ousted Assad in December, Israel carried out hundreds of air strikes on Syria and sent troops into the demilitarised buffer zone of the Golan.
Israeli authorities have also voiced support for Syria’s Druze and mistrust of the country’s new leaders.
In March, following a deadly clash between government-linked forces and Druze fighters in Jaramana, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said his country would not allow Syria’s new rulers “to harm the Druze.”
Druze leaders rejected the warning and declared their loyalty to a united Syria.
Rescuers say death toll from Israeli strike on north Gaza home rises to 23
- Gaza’s civil defense agency reported on Friday that the death toll from an Israeli air strike the day before on a house in the north of the Palestinian territory had risen to 23
- Gaza’s northern area of Jabalia has repeatedly been a focus Israel’s military offensive
GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defense agency reported on Friday that the death toll from an Israeli air strike the day before on a house in the north of the Palestinian territory had risen to 23.
“Civil defense teams recovered 11 bodies last night and this morning following the Israeli bombing that targeted a residential house ... in Jabalia,” Mohammed Al-Mughayyir, an official with the agency, told AFP.
“This is in addition to the 12 victims recovered at the time of the attack yesterday,” he added.
Gaza’s northern area of Jabalia has repeatedly been a focus Israel’s military offensive since the start of the war on October 7, 2023 following Hamas’s attack on Israel.
The military has returned to the district several times after announcing it had been cleared of militants, saying Hamas fighters had regrouped there.
In another strike in the area on Thursday, Israel hit what was previously a police station, rescuers said.
The toll from that attack has risen to 11, Mughayyir said, after initially announcing that nine people had been killed.
The military said on Thursday that it had struck a Hamas “command and control center” in the area of Jabalia, without specifying the target.
Israeli strikes continued on Friday, with the civil defense agency reporting that at least five people — a couple and their three children — had been killed when their tent was struck in the Al-Mawasi area of the southern city of Khan Yunis.
Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that the deceased woman had been pregnant.
Since Israel resumed its offensive on March 18 after the collapse of a two-month ceasefire with Hamas, at least 1,978 people have been killed in Gaza, bringing the overall death toll of the war to 51,355, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
