Latest news with #JensLaerke
Boston Globe
26-06-2025
- Health
- Boston Globe
The lethal risk of seeking food in Gaza
Advertisement Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the U.N. agency for coordination of humanitarian affairs, described the new aid distribution hubs as 'death traps' for Palestinians. 'Gaza is the hungriest place on earth,' he said Wednesday. 'When we are able to bring anything in, it's getting plundered immediately by the population. That's the level of desperation.' The new aid system, run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, has just a few operational hubs, primarily in the south. It was put into place after Israel blocked aid deliveries to Gaza for nearly three months from March to May. Restrictions on the entry of aid were partially lifted May 19. It was part of an effort to try to replace an aid operation led by the United Nations with hundreds of distribution points. The United Nations and other international aid organizations have criticized the new system, saying the aid it delivers falls far short of needs and that it forces people to walk for miles in dangerous conditions for a chance to find food. They accuse Israel of turning aid into a weapon. Advertisement Witnesses on a number of occasions have reported that Israeli troops opened fire on the approaches to the new aid hubs. The Israeli military has said repeatedly that its forces have fired 'warning shots' when people approached its forces in what it described as a threatening manner. Israeli officials have said the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites were needed to allow for the delivery of aid without Hamas benefiting. They say that in the past, Hamas has taken control of much of the food and other aid reaching the territory, keeping some for its own people, selling some on the black market and restricting supplies for ordinary Palestinians. France on Tuesday condemned what it said was Israeli gunfire at civilians gathered around an aid distribution point in Gaza, saying it had left dozens of dead and wounded. The International Committee of the Red Cross said it had treated people who had been shot Tuesday near a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation site in the southern city of Rafah. The Red Cross said that its field hospital in Rafah, which is near the aid hub, received 149 patients after that incident, including 16 who were declared dead on arrival and three others who died from their wounds. It was not possible to verify the figures independently. The Israeli military said it was 'not aware of the incident in question at the Rafah aid distribution site.' Advertisement On Tuesday, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said there were false allegations of attacks near its aid distribution sites, asserting that the international media had been mistakenly linking violence near U.N. convoys with its operations. Since the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation started distributing aid in mid-May, the Red Cross said its field hospital in Rafah has activated 'mass casualty procedures' 20 times. (BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM.) 'We condemn with maximum strength the fact that for one month now, people are being injured and killed every day while trying to get urgently needed food in a war zone,' Christian Cardon, the chief spokesperson of the Red Cross, said Thursday. (END OPTIONAL TRIM.) In a separate statement Monday, the chief of the Israeli military's southern command defended the importance of continuing the war in Gaza, which was launched to crush Hamas after it led the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. 'We cannot tolerate Hamas here,' said the commander, Maj. Gen. Yaniv Asor. 'We will not end this war until the threat has been eliminated.' In recent months, ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas have repeatedly failed to produce a breakthrough. A key sticking point is the permanence of a ceasefire. Hamas has insisted on a lasting end to the war in Gaza. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has rejected that demand, saying Hamas' military and governing capabilities must first be dismantled. On Wednesday, Israeli officials signaled they wanted to change the procedures for trucks affiliated with the United Nations and other international organizations to enter northern Gaza. Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said Hamas was taking control of the aid entering northern Gaza and was stealing it from civilians. Advertisement The two Israeli leaders said they instructed the military to 'present within 48 hours an action plan to prevent Hamas from taking control of the aid.' The Israeli Defense Ministry body that oversees aid delivery to Gaza said that 71 trucks carrying food, flour, medicines and other supplies entered Gaza on Tuesday after steps had been taken to ensure that the aid does not fall into the hands of Hamas. While hunger remains widespread in Gaza, there were signs that food was becoming somewhat more available after a month of aid flows. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has said it has distributed more than 800,000 boxes of food aid since it started operations, including nearly 40,000 Thursday. World Central Kitchen, the charity set up by celebrity chef José Andrés, said this week that it had resumed operations in Gaza after a seven-week pause. The United Nations said that Gaza still faced catastrophic hunger and more than 20 months with insufficient supplies has added up to a cumulative deficit. 'Families in Gaza are risking their lives to access food, with nearly daily mass casualties reported as people attempt to reach supplies,' the U.N. humanitarian agency said in a report Thursday. 'Most families survive on just one nutritiously poor meal per day, while adults routinely skip meals to prioritize children, the elderly, and the ill amid deepening hunger and desperation.' (STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.) Ahmad Samier Kafina, from Nuseirat in central Gaza, said he had risked going three times to an aid distribution point in central Gaza because his extended family relied on him to find food. Kafina said that each time, he had left the place where the family was living around midnight and walked for 45 minutes toward the site, often in the company of neighbors and relatives because it felt safer in a group. Only once had he managed to secure even a small quantity of food, but he said that he faced gunfire. Advertisement 'I saw death there,' he said. He said he feared a stampede and had seen people in the crowds using sharp implements to steal food from those who had secured it. Despite the risks, he said, he had no choice. 'We have no other source of food.' This article originally appeared in
Irish Examiner
21-06-2025
- Politics
- Irish Examiner
Letters to the Editor: Death trap food aid centres in Gaza
The Israel-US Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) was first registered in February this year and its fewer food aid centres set up on May 26 in Gaza are described as death traps overseen by Israel's military and armed contractors. Last week, Jens Laerke, the UN spokesperson for the coordination of humanitarian affairs, said the GHF 'is not delivering supplies safely to those in need' and it was a 'failure' from a humanitarian point of view. Exhausted Palestinians who walk off the correct route to the GHF aid centres or linger too long in despair after aid runs out are shot at and killed daily. Tanks are also used to fire at civilians. These are supposed to be warning shots. The banning of international media by Israel from Gaza since the war began in October 2023 is a key factor as to why the war in Gaza is so extreme as it is now in the summer of 2025. If, for example, Britain's Channel 4 or the US' CBS News was in Gaza reporting on the war, violence, deaths, and brutal injuries of civilians with their videos of hospitals hit by Israel's missile attacks with some of the dead and wounded medics, nurses, doctors, patients, children or babies; it would have had a faster impact on governments calling on Israel to end the targeting of civilians in the most miserable war of the 21st century. Experienced aid agencies run by the UN, Britain, etc, have been more restricted in Gaza since March. There are requests for the UN to be let fully back in to deliver aid safely. Israel has a right as any country to ensure its security — but daily, casual killings by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) of civilians in Gaza is truly reprehensible. All moral lines are violated in this war. No protection for the civilian population. I hope Hamas will release the remaining hostages it took into Gaza in October 2023. They too endure terrible conditions. Mary Sullivan, College Rd, Cork Help sought in seeking relatives from Cork City I'm trying to find out who my mum's relative was who came over from Ireland or America. I think it would have been a cousin. Her name was Eileen — although I'm not sure of her surname — she could have been Eileen Geaney, Eileen Quinn, Eileen Foley, or Eileen Fenton. These would have been her maiden surnames. My mother's maiden name was Catherine Fenton, born in 1927. Her mother's maiden name was Catherine Quinn, born in Cork in 1900. Her last address in the city was 56 Blarney St in 1920. Her father was Richard Quinn, whose last known address was 11 Winter's Hill before he died in 1917. My mother's father was John Christopher Fenton, born in 1897 in Broad Lane, Cork. His father was Michael Fenton, and his mother was Margaret. Does anyone have a relative that was called Eileen and was possibly born around 1927 give or take a few years and used to visit my grandmother at 78, Butt Park Rd, Honicknowle, Plymouth, England? Last known visit was the summer of 1971. I appreciate any information regarding Eileen's relationship to the above mentioned, which can be sent to: cathymitchell1959@ Cathy Mitchell, Torpoint, Cornwall Government clearly in a dilemma over Israel Following several debates in the Dáil over the past weeks, the Government clearly has a dilemma on its hands. Quoting legal obstacles, they voted twice against the introduction of restrictions on the Central Bank of Ireland regarding their facilitation of the sale of Israeli war bonds on the EU market, while at the same time unequivocally describing the slaughter and starvation carried out by Israel in Gaza as war crimes and a genocide. While legal constraints must be considered, the ongoing genocide in Gaza demands that the Government exploits all possible means to align the institutional framework with their admirably strong moral stance. If this prompts a legal challenge at EU level, so be it. The situation is perhaps well summarised in the words of the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau in 1849: 'If it [the law] is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine [in this instance the mechanisms of national or EU government]. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.' Tom Butterly, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin Time for general boycott and sanctions on Israel Given the deranged continuing assault and starvation of the civilian population of Gaza by the Netanyahu regime, is the Occupied Territories Bill still fit for purpose? Is it not now necessary to have a complete general boycott and sanctions imposed on Israel, rather than just on the occupied territories, as long as this regime remains in power and continues extreme policies that will render the hopes for a two-state solution impossible to deliver. Andrew Feinstein, a Jewish former prominent figure in the ANC [African National Congress], has said before that Israeli apartheid of Palestinians is 'far more brutal than anything we saw or experienced in South Africa'. The world was ready to impose strict sanctions on apartheid South Africa, so why not now on the rampaging vengeance of Netanyahu in Gaza, the accelerated internationally illegal annexation of Palestinian lands in the West Bank, as well as all the humiliating day-to-day repressions of the apartheid system? Netanyahu has also made a terrible situation worse by his attacks on Iran thus further confusing the moral ambivalence of the European and G7 powers. Instead of the Western democracies, with some notable exceptions, inexplicably enabling the genocidal impunity of Netanyahu, they should be doing everything in their power to contain and stop him. Shame on them. Cynthia Carroll, Newport, Co Tipperary Mitigating the impact of Cork-Limerick motorway The Cork to Limerick motorway is a vital piece of infrastructure. However, the environmental impact of the project should be a major concern. Whichever contractor is appointed, it should be fine if the road surface was built to German autobahn standard — without a repeat of instances of surface break-up and drainage problems seen on previous motorways. I hope that vast numbers of trees and shrubs will be planted to screen it from surrounding areas (a good mix of evergreen as well, because deciduous trees look rather bleak for five months of the year). As well as provisions for farmers, I hope that under and overpasses are provided so that wildlife can move easily across the motorway route. In addition, competitions should be held for sculptors to design artistic installations for sites on the route Martin Ray, Deansgrange, Dublin No change of use required for funeral home In relation to your online article — 'Undertakers lodge plans to convert vacant former bank in Cork into funeral home' (Irish Examiner, June 17) — it perplexes me that the developer should require change of use planning permission for a facility that has dealt with debt since the early 1980s. John Deasy, Ballincollig, Cork Planning to be a landlord was not 'accidental' Thank you for publishing the article by Kevin O'Donoghue on his experience as a landlord. It is an insightful one. One that we must learn from as a country so our 'muscle memory', as he describes it, is attuned to these hazards in the future. He's very honest about his purchase of four houses in rural North Cork in 2003. 'Our plan was simple,' he wrote. 'We would use the Germans' money to buy, hold for five years, and having had the benefits of an uplift, sell the properties, pay off the mortgages and retain the profit to be rolled over in the next adventure.' He implies that he is an 'accidental landlord'. I've encountered many accidental landlords from the mid-noughties. They are people who purchased a property, often to live in themselves. They may later have had to move for work or family and, being caught by negative equity after the bust, ended up renting the property as a home to someone else. Mr O'Donoghue is not one of these. By his own description, his plan in 2003 was to purchase the properties for rent and flip these at a profit. Housing, he wrote, 'is a State responsibility'. Now, after issuing notices to quit for reason of sale to four households, he acknowledges those living there 'will find it next to impossible to locate alternative accommodation'. He says he 'never signed up to be that f**ing b**ard'. Let that permeate our muscle memory. Oliver Doyle, Montenotte, Cork Read More Letters to the Editor: Mussel farm will destroy Kinsale area
Days of Palestine
14-06-2025
- Politics
- Days of Palestine
UN labels US-Israel-backed Gaza aid program a 'failure'
DaysofPal – A harsh evaluation of the recently established US- and Israel-backed aid program, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), was delivered by the UN, which referred to it as a humanitarian 'failure' and charged it with escalating the suffering in the besieged Gaza Strip. Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), stated in a press briefing in Geneva on Friday: 'GHF, I think it's fair to say, has been, from a principled humanitarian standpoint, a failure. They are not doing what a humanitarian operation should do, which is providing aid to people safely and securely.' The GHF, a private organization launched on May 26 after Israel had fully sealed off Gaza's aid corridors for more than two months, claims to have distributed over 18 million meals. However, the UN and major international aid organizations have refused to cooperate with the initiative, citing its lack of transparency, politicization of aid, and close alignment with Israeli military objectives. Critics argue that the GHF operates outside the international humanitarian framework and has effectively militarized aid distribution. UN agencies accuse it of failing to ensure the safe delivery of life-saving supplies and contributing to further chaos by enabling Israeli control over humanitarian access. Humanitarian organizations have reported dozens of civilian casualties near GHF-operated aid distribution points, largely attributed to Israeli forces opening fire on crowds. According to the Palestinian Civil Defense, around 30 Palestinians were killed in early June while attempting to collect aid. The Israeli military claimed it had only fired warning shots, a claim widely contradicted by eyewitnesses. Laerke emphasized the UN's willingness to resume broad-scale humanitarian operations in Gaza if Israel allows the safe and consistent entry of sufficient aid: 'We are ready to operate at scale again, but it requires real, regular, safe, and principled access.' Surge in civilian deaths during aid distribution Since the GHF began its work, aid distributions have become flashpoints for violence, resulting in repeated massacres of Palestinians. On Friday alone, at least 20 Palestinians were killed by Israeli strikes during aid collection efforts, including at the Nablus roundabout and near the American School in northern Gaza. Another direct strike killed nine people near Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. Hospitals across the Strip documented at least 27 deaths on Saturday, including 11 people shot while waiting for food. A new massacre was reported near an aid distribution site in the Wadi Gaza area. According to Gaza's Ministry of Health, as of Thursday, 245 Palestinians have been killed and more than 2,152 wounded near GHF-linked distribution points. These figures are part of a broader toll from Israel's ongoing military campaign. UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, has also denounced the GHF mechanism, labeling it a 'degrading' and 'lethal' aid system. The UN had rejected involvement with the GHF from its inception, asserting that it lacks neutrality and integrity. The GHF has drawn criticism not only for failing to meet humanitarian standards but also for serving what many observers see as a political and military agenda: controlling food access as a method of displacement and collective punishment. Israel, with full backing from the United States, stands accused of committing acts that many international bodies and human rights organizations characterize as genocide, including deliberate starvation, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and forced displacement. The war on Gaza has left over 182,000 Palestinians dead or wounded, with more than 11,000 reported missing, most of them women and children. The enclave is already experiencing a devastating famine that is killing a lot of people, especially babies. Entire neighborhoods have been leveled, and hundreds of thousands remain homeless. Shortlink for this post:
NBC News
14-06-2025
- Health
- NBC News
Crushed by Israeli missile strikes, Gaza's hospitals are barely functioning
Israeli military assaults on the Gaza Strip's hospitals have ramped up in recent weeks to the highest level so far this year, bringing a health system already weakened by 19 months of war to a breaking point. NBC News has analyzed 27 videos and images from the last two months taken by civilians and our own journalists on the ground to piece together a picture of the full extent of the destruction of a health system engulfed in war. In footage from a surveillance camera, men, women and children could be seen crossing the entrance to Khan Younis' European Hospital moments before a missile hit, blasting people into the air as others scattered in panic. Another video, posted to social media and verified by NBC News, showed the fiery aftermath of an explosion at a medical warehouse near Al-Awda Hospital, in northern Gaza, which has been attacked repeatedly, including on May 22 and again on May 24. 'Nearly all hospitals in Gaza are now damaged or destroyed, and half of them are no longer operational,' Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, told NBC News. During the war, Gaza's hospitals have eked back services, only to be repeatedly struck or besieged again. Hospitals are protected under international humanitarian law, butIsrael has maintained that Hamas uses hospitals and medical centers for military activities, opening them to attack. Hamas has denied doing so. Humanitarian groups, including the United Nations, havesaid Israel has not provided sufficient information to substantiate many of its claims and have called for independent investigations of Israel's attacks and Hamas' alleged misuse of the facilities. Earlier this week, however, the Israeli military gave a small group of reporters a tour of a tunnel that was uncovered beneath the European Hospital, where it said it had recovered the body of Hamas' military chief Mohammed Sinwar. 'We cannot stress this enough: Hospitals must never be militarized or targeted. If they are, it may constitute a war crime,' Laerke said. Of Gaza's 36 hospitals, none are fully functioning; 17 are providing partial services, and 19 are not functioning at all, according to World Health Organization data from Monday. The wider health system, including ambulances, field hospitals and clinics, has been attacked more than 700 times since the start of the war, killing at least 900 people and injuring more than 1,000. (The death toll across Gaza is more than 55,000, according to the health ministry.) After a ceasefire was called in January, Israeli military attacks on Gaza's health system had abated. The truce fell apart in March, and WHO data shows a ramping up of attacks in recent weeks. While the organization tallied five attacks on Gaza's health system in April, after the first three weeks of May, the number of attacks had quadrupled to 21, with at least three more attacks since, including on the vicinity of a dialysis center at the Indonesian Hospital on June 1 and strikes on Al-Aqsa and Al-Ahli Hospitals on June 4 and 5. In addition, hostilities near Al-Amal Hospital have rendered it 'out of service,' the WHO said Monday. The earliest attack recorded by NBC News during that two-month period was on April 2, when an Israeli airstrike hit a UNRWA clinic in Jabalia, north of Gaza City, that was housing displaced people. Video captured by NBC News on the ground documented the chaotic aftermath: walls crushed to rubble, charred mattresses, furniture blasted into shards. A child's small, shrouded body was loaded onto a donkey cart to be taken to the morgue. In another case, the Israel Defense Forces struck two hospitals on the same day, May 13, both in Khan Younis. Video verified by NBC News shows several large plumes of smoke rising from the grounds of the European Hospital. Palestinian health officials said at least 16 people were killed and dozens more injured. The WHO said the facility had been forced to suspend services. Also struck that day was the Nasser Medical Complex. Video posted by the U.N. showed scattered debris, twisted hospital beds and damaged equipment. It was the fourth time Nasser had been hit during the war, according to the U.N., with the latest strike killing two people and injuring a dozen others. In a statement in response to those attacks, the IDF said its forces had targeted a command and control center located at Nasser Hospital and 'a Hamas underground terrorist infrastructure site' underneath the European Hospital. The IDF provided evidence of what it said was a Hamas tunnel beneath the European Hospital. It did not, however, provide evidence for the command and control center at Nasser, or for the following cases, but broadly said: 'The Hamas terrorist organization continues to use hospitals in the Gaza Strip for terrorist activity.' NBC News is not able to independently verify the IDF's statements.
Express Tribune
14-06-2025
- Health
- Express Tribune
Israeli kills 27 Palestinians near Gaza aid site since dawn
Palestinians at al-Shifa Hospital react over the bodies of their relatives killed by Israeli fire near an aid distribution centre in central Gaza, June 11 [Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters] Listen to article At least 27 Palestinians have been killed since dawn in Israeli strikes across Gaza city, including 11 civilians waiting for humanitarian aid, hospital officials told Al Jazeera. The attacks hit multiple locations, with central Gaza seeing some of the deadliest incidents. At least 15 Palestinians were killed and many others wounded near aid distribution points in what marks the latest in a series of deadly assaults on aid seekers. Local sources said Israeli forces opened fire on civilians gathered around distribution sites operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an initiative launched in late May amid a near-total Israeli blockade that the United Nations says has brought the enclave of 2.3 million people to the brink of famine. Since the GHF began operations, more than 274 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds wounded while seeking food. The foundation, backed by the United States and Israel, employs private American military contractors and is overseen by Israeli forces. UN officials and humanitarian agencies have heavily criticised the GHF's operations. Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), called the model a 'failure.' 'They are not doing what a humanitarian operation should do, which is providing aid to people where they are, in a safe and secure manner,' Laerke said at a press briefing on Friday. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) also condemned the model, labelling it 'a recipe for chaos.' In a statement posted on X, the agency warned that it 'weaponises aid and results in fear, discrimination, and growing desperation.' Ongoing restrictions and hostilities continue to obstruct humanitarian aid deliveries in #Gaza. ⚠️ People risking—and losing—their lives searching for food 💉 Children wake up during surgery due to lack of anaesthetic After more than 600 days of war, the scale of suffering is… — UNRWA (@UNRWA) June 14, 2025 UNRWA called for the blockade on Gaza to be lifted and for the UN to resume relief operations, stressing that 'aid must be delivered safely and at scale.'. In the south, three Palestinians were killed in an Israeli drone strike near the Islamic University in Khan Younis, while Israeli tanks shelled residential towers in Hamad City and targeted displaced people in the Asdaa area. Israel's war on Gaza According to the Gaza-based health authorities, at least 55,207 Palestinians have been killed, the majority of whom are reported to be women and children. Israel has killed 4,603 Palestinians and injured 14,186 since breaking a ceasefire in March this year, it added. Israel's atrocities have displaced around 90% of Gaza's estimated 2 million residents, created a severe hunger crisis, and caused widespread destruction across the territory. The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants last November for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave
