West Bank crisis: UN chief calls for immediate halt to Israeli strikes
Mr. Guterres’s intervention late Wednesday comes amid one of the biggest Israeli Security Forces (ISF) operations in the West Bank in years – the ISF insists against terrorists - with raids, airstrikes including drones that by Thursday had killed 17 people, according to Palestinian media.
On Wednesday, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, warned that the Israeli military’s actions risked further enflaming an “already explosive situation” – citing multiple airstrikes in the Nur Shams Refugee Camp in Tulkarem on Monday night that left five dead – three Palestinian men and two boys aged 13 and 15
The UN office warned that the situation in the Occupied West Bank “could worsen dramatically” if the Israeli military continues to “systematically use unlawful lethal force and ignore violence perpetrated by settlers”.
Dire sanitary conditions and constant evacuation orders linked to ongoing operations by the Israeli military have led to the outbreaks of multiple preventable diseases, polio included.
“A lack of water, healthcare and humanitarian access has formed a “perfect storm of conditions" in which polio reemerged in Gaza,” said Sam Rose, Senior Deputy Field Director for UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine Refugees.
