Tommaso Della Longa, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies’ spokesperson (IFRC), said the situation in Gaza is getting “worse and worse.”
“What we are seeing is what we predicted, and not because we are magicians, but because we know by experience,” Della Longa said in an interview with Anadolu News Agency, adding that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are in shelters without access to running water, proper food and adequate sanitation.
According to the United Nations, 85% of the population of Gaza is already internally displaced, amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure is damaged or destroyed.
More than 1.9 million have been forced to leave their homes, some multiple times.
The entire population of Gaza faces crisis levels of food insecurity or worse, according to the World Food Program (WFP), which has warned of an impending famine.
“It is beyond the catastrophic,” said Della Longa.
“We knew since the beginning that the lack of food, the lack of clean water, lack of shelter, lack of proper shelter, with running water, and sanitation would have led to what is happening now, which means respiratory diseases, diarrhea is spreading like a lion’s fire among the population,” he added.
Della Longa also stressed that life has never been normal in Gaza.
“Before the beginning of this conflict … the normal life was not normal at all. The people in Gaza have been suffering. Sometimes the international community is forgetting that people in Gaza were suffering even before this,” he said.
178 Palestinians Killed in 24 Hours as Israel Commits New Massacres in Gaza
Della Longa also slammed Israeli attacks on ambulances as ‘unacceptable’
“It’s unacceptable that an ambulance ended up in a line of fire,” he reportedly said, adding that “the ambulance was clearly marked with the Red Cross, the Red Crescent emblem, which under Geneva Convention international humanitarian law, must be respected and protected by all the parties of the conflict.”
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 25,105 Palestinians have been killed, and 62,681 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
Palestinian and international estimates say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
(PC, Anadolu)
