The UN has been forced to evacuate its humanitarian aid centre for the second time since the start of the war, an official said.
United Nations relief operations in the besieged Gaza Strip continue a day after a senior UN official said humanitarian efforts had been halted as fresh Israeli evacuation orders forced the closure of the main UN operations centre.
U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric on Tuesday appeared to tone down the comments of the U.N. official, who spoke on Monday on condition of anonymity.
Asked whether conditions in Gaza had led to the halting of UN aid deliveries, Dujarric told reporters: “The conditions in Gaza yesterday [Monday] “We found it extremely difficult to do our job.”
“We are doing what we can with what we have,” he said. “We have been saying from the beginning that it is about helping by taking advantage of every opportunity, every gap that we can fill. So each situation is assessed on a day-by-day, hour-by-hour basis.”
The UN has had to evacuate its humanitarian aid centre in the Gaza Strip for the second time since the start of the war on orders from the Israeli army, an official said.
The centre, which includes warehouses and staff accommodation, had already been relocated due to Israel's ground invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza in early May.
The new centre, with accommodation, offices and warehouses for humanitarian goods, was set up in Deir el-Balah, in the central part of the enclave, but an evacuation order on Sunday also included the new headquarters.
A spokesman for the UN emergency relief organisation OCHA said in Geneva that evacuation orders had been issued for 19 neighbourhoods in the northern Gaza Strip and Deir el-Balah since Friday, and that 15 premises housing UN and NGO staff and their families had been affected.
Also affected were four UN relief warehouses, a water tank, a desalination plant, three wells, two smaller health centres and a hospital. There were 29 emergency shelters for displaced people in these areas.
UN security chief Gilles Michaud said Tuesday that over the weekend, the Israeli military gave only a few hours' notice to more than 200 UN staff members to leave their offices and living spaces in Deir el-Balah.
He said the timing “could not be worse” as a massive polio vaccination campaign is due to begin shortly, which will require the entry of large numbers of UN staff into Gaza.
“The United Nations is determined to remain in Gaza,” it said in a statement. “The delivery of humanitarian aid continues, a great feat considering that we are operating in the highest peripheries of tolerable risk.
“Mass evacuation orders are the latest in a long list of unbearable threats to humanitarian and UN personnel.”
The International Rescue Committee said Tuesday that Israel's new evacuation orders had forced the charity and other humanitarian groups to “halt relief operations during what is already a dire situation for civilians.”
“It is urgent that humanitarian actors be able to continue their work, without threats of displacement or military operations. We urge all parties to protect civilians and facilitate humanitarian access at all times,” the organization posted on X.
On Oct. 7 last year, Hamas fighters attacked Israeli communities, killing some 1,100 people and kidnapping some 250 captives, according to Israeli counts.
Since then, the Israeli military has swept through swathes of the Palestinian enclave, driving nearly all of its 2.3 million residents from their homes, causing famine and deadly disease and killing at least 40,000 people, according to Palestinian health officials.
