Baghdad: The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) warned on Tuesday of the continued civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip while trying to obtain food, amid the catastrophic humanitarian conditions severed by the besieged population for months. UNRWA said in a statement: “Civilians, especially displaced persons, are being killed while searching for food in aid distribution sites, which have become dangerous places that threaten their lives instead of providing them with safety and the minimum necessities of life. The United Nations, including its humanitarian agencies, led by UNRWA, remains the only entity capable of delivering humanitarian assistance safely and efficiently to the population in need,” stressing “the need to return to reliable humanitarian mechanisms that guarantee the protection and safety of civilians.”

According to National Iraqi News Agency, UNRWA renewed its call to halt the repeated targeting of civilians in Gaza and to allow safe access for humanitarian aid without obstacles or political conditions, warning that “the continuation of this policy deepens the humanitarian catastrophe experienced by more than two million citizens in the besieged Strip.”

UNRWA strongly criticized the new “Israeli-American” mechanism for bringing aid into the Gaza Strip, considering it to have become a “field of death,” where vulnerable people are directly targeted while standing in long lines to obtain food.