In Gaza “an unmistakable smell of death is everywhere,” says the UN

United Nations.- The United Nations for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) described this Friday the situation in Gaza City, after the Israeli order for total evacuation on Tuesday, as a desolate panorama in which “the unmistakable smell of death is everywhere”.

“The unmistakable smell of death is everywhere, a macabre reminder that the streets hide the remains of mothers, fathers, children… of human beings. Their lives have been cut short by killing machines and many will never be found,” said OCHA spokesperson in Gaza, Olga Cherevko, in a virtual meeting with journalists. As part of Cherevko’s current devastating portrayal of the Palestinian enclave, she emphasized that the displacement of “hundreds of thousands” of Gazans to the south of the Strip has caused “even small animals to have to seek space” in a highly overcrowded area. “Hospitals place their patients as best they can, and potable water, nutritious food, and life are no longer basic rights,” Cherevko continued. Many of those displaced to the south have returned these days to the north, where the Gazan capital is located, due to confusion and lack of space and security conditions, according to OCHA.

On Tuesday, Israel ordered the evacuation of the entire Gaza City, as it intensifies the bombings in preparation for a ground operation on the town.

“Gaza doesn’t need compassion”

The OCHA spokesperson in Gaza stated that the Gazan people “do not need compassion” from the international community but rather to “stop the atrocious violence”, emphasizing the suffering caused by Israeli infantry and tanks while “drones and fighter jets fly overhead.” Furthermore, he concluded by detailing that most Palestinian doctors and paramedics continue to work day and night under Israeli fire without medicines, electricity, water and, of course, without pay.

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“Our humanity, yours, mine, everyone’s, demands that we act now. History will not judge us by our speeches, but by our actions. And they will ask: when Gaza was burning, children were dying of hunger and hospitals were collapsing, why didn’t they act?”, he emphasized. Recent UN data estimates at least 1.9 million people – around 90% of the population in the Gaza Strip – as displaced during the war; many of them repeatedly. Before Israel announced its intention to take Gaza City, in early August, nearly a million people were sheltering in the Gazan capital, many displaced from other parts of the enclave.