GAZA, (PIC)
Speaking to journalists in Geneva following a three-month stint in the besieged territory, Yasmina Guerda of the UN humanitarian agency OCHA described children who lost limbs in Israel’s attack on Nuseirat refugee camp earlier this month that killed at least 274 people and injured more than 700.
“Many of whom reminded me of my own two little toddlers. They were staring into the void, too shell-shocked to produce a sound or a tear,” she said.
For Guerda, there are no “living conditions” in the Gaza Strip.
“What they have … are survival conditions, and barely. They are holding on by a thread.”
She said aid workers were trying to “quantify the suffering with figures”, looking at the total number of displaced people, the liters of water they get per day, or the truckloads of aid that make it across the border.
She pointed out that more than 200 humanitarian relief workers have been killed in Gaza since October 7.
“But it doesn’t matter,” she said. “Those numbers, they’re never near enough … [for] a population that has lost nearly everything.”
“There are no safe centimeters left in Gaza,” Guerda said.
