'There's no time for funerals - only ceasefire can save children of Gaza now'
There are no funerals,” an Islamic Relief staff member in Gaza tells me. “They just take the dead to the graveyard in an ambulance, with only a few relatives in attendance. In Gaza now, you don’t even get a proper burial.”
The situation on the ground in Gaza has deteriorated each day since this month’s conflict began. There was a crisis in Gaza long before the recent hostilities started with the horrifying attacks on Israel on October 7. But the complete siege and bombardment of the occupied enclave that followed has turned that crisis into a catastrophe.
Islamic Relief’s team on the ground is reporting harrowing scenes that should give us all pause for thought. The latest figures show that more children have been killed in Gaza in the past three weeks than the total killed in conflicts around the world in every year since 2019.
The number of people killed in Gaza is now above 9,000, with the death toll expected to rise further as rescuers dig through the debris of destroyed buildings, searching for more survivors or casualties. More than 1,800 are reported missing, feared to be under rubble. The combined death toll in Gaza and Israel now exceeds 10,000.
Tufail HussainIn this heartbreaking situation our staff have continued to respond with a steadfast commitment, working tirelessly in partnership with local community organisations to deliver aid. Together we have provided 123,987 packs of food or food vouchers to over 25,000 people, distributed over 2.2 million medical items to hospitals and health centres, and provided clean drinking water for 10,238 people. As food supplies run dangerously low, over 21,000 of the people who have received food from us have received it in the form of fresh vegetables.
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We have bought these directly from farmers as we try to keep the barest threads of the local economy alive. I couldn’t be more proud nor more humbled than I am now by the resilience, resourcefulness, and dedication of our team. Despite the Israeli military’s order for people to evacuate south, a small number of our staff chose to stay in northern Gaza for as long as possible to support those who could not be safely moved.
Most of our team are in the southern areas of Khan Younis and Rafah with their families. But as the fighting rages on, no one is safe, and that includes humanitarian aid workers. Islamic Relief’s offices in Gaza City were hit by an airstrike and damaged beyond repair, although thankfully none of our staff were on the premises at the time.
Sadly, other agencies involved in the relief effort have paid a very heavy price. No fewer than 63 staff of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the main UN organisation supporting displaced families in Gaza, have been killed. One colleague in Gaza told us: “I am afraid if I die, they won’t recognise me, but I am wearing my wedding ring which is engraved with my name, and my wife’s name, so at least they can guess who I am. We are all terrified.”
A man sits among the debris in Gaza (Anadolu via Getty Images)It is plain that if the Israeli bombardment of Gaza continues, many more innocents – whether men, women or children – will die. The only humane way forward is surely to agree an immediate ceasefire. Only if this is put in place and far more supplies are brought through the Rafah border crossing from Egypt – continuously, safely, and unimpeded – will aid agencies be able to work at the enormous scale needed to meet humanitarian needs that UNRWA has rightly described as “immense”.
The international community has a responsibility to every person who survives the bombardment, and to the thousands of families who have lost loved ones, to settle for nothing less than a ceasefire to prevent further loss of life. After the Rafah crossing reopened on October 21, it took a week for the number of trucks carrying aid into Gaza to pass the 100 mark. Before the current escalation in the conflict, over 100 entered through Rafah every day.
Eighty per cent of the 2.2 million population were reliant on humanitarian aid even before October 7. The level of aid now is simply inadequate. And until there is a ceasefire, Gaza’s brave health workers and aid workers and the people they serve will continue to be sitting targets.
Last weekend we experienced the most heart-wrenching couple of days I have known in all my years with Islamic Relief. We were cut off from all contact with our team in Gaza during the 36-hour communications blackout and we did not know if they were alive or dead. Words cannot describe the enormity of the relief we felt when we finally got news from them that they had survived.
It is not only the quantity of humanitarian aid being delivered into Gaza that needs to change. At the moment these trucks are prohibited from bringing in fuel, which is desperately needed for all of Gaza’s infrastructure to function, from ambulances to bakeries, from water pumps to hospital incubators and dialysis machines.
The fuel embargo must be lifted to stop more lives being lost. Denying people the most basic of necessities is collective punishment and should be condemned by the international community. Our supporters are writing to their MPs in their tens of thousands, our biggest ever campaign, to urge the UK Government to call for an immediate ceasefire.
Over 40% of those killed in the past two weeks have been children, a terrible waste of human life that will stain the conscience of all who have the power to stop this. The only way to end the devastation is to call for an immediate ceasefire. Now.
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