Disease threatens tens of thousands in Gazan shelters, UN and WHO say

The threat of disease is intensifying in temporary shelters in the Gaza Strip, where tens of thousands of people fleeing Israeli bombardment are living in cramped conditions, according to the UN emergency relief organization OCHA.

Health services in the area have long been overstretched, and fresh waves of displacement ordered by Israeli forces have made their task even more difficult, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Saturday.

Respiratory infections and diarrhoea are among the most severe diseases in emergency shelters, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on social media platform X on Friday.

Some 180,000 people are already suffering from respiratory infections, while more than 136,000 children under the age of five currently have diarrhoea, which can cause a life-threatening loss of water and vital minerals at this age if not treated.

There are also more than 55,000 cases of lice and scabies.

According to OCHA, the UN Children’s Fund delivered 600,000 vaccine doses to the Gaza Strip on Friday. The aim is for young children to receive their routine immunizations next year despite the war. This includes immunizations against diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough.

Israel’s military announced a four-hour tactical pause in fighting in a refugee camp in Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip on Saturday.

Military activities there would be temporarily suspended for humanitarian reasons, an army spokesman announced in Arabic on X. The pause is so that the population can obtain supplies, he wrote.

Israel’s military had previously called on residents of the embattled city of Khan Younis in the south of the coastal area to seek safety in Rafah near the Egyptian border.

Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip has now killed 21,672 people, according to the Hamas-controlled health authority in Gaza. The figures cannot be confirmed, but the UN and other observers point out that the authority’s figures have been credible in the past.

While the Israeli army had previously stated that it was in the process of taking operational control of the area in the north, it is now focussing on the south and central Gaza Strip.

Progress in the north was continuing though, according to IDF Spokesman Daniel Hagari late on Saturday.

“In the northern Gaza Strip, we are focusing efforts in the area of Darj Tufah, Hamas’s last significant stronghold in the northern Gaza Strip,” Hagari said.

In Khan Younis, in the Gaza Strip’s south-east, Hagari said the IDF on Saturday “raided the Hamas headquarters in the heart of the city, including the organization’s intelligence command center.”

The information could not be independently verified.

Israel suspects that Hamas leader Yehya al-Sinwar is currently hiding in the underground tunnels under Khan Younis. The Hamas stronghold is currently a focal point of Israel’s ground offensive.

The army also “eliminated three terrorist cells,” Hagari said.

“The southern region of Lebanon will not return to what it used to be. Throughout the day, several launches from Lebanon to Israel were identified, with many of Hezbollah’s launches falling in Lebanese territory,” he said, adding that 80% of Hezbollah’s rockets on Friday fell in Lebanese territory. The information could not be independently verified.

Since the beginning of the Gaza war following the Hamas massacre in Israel on October 7, there have been repeated confrontations between the IDF and Hezbollah in the Israeli-Lebanese border region, with deaths and injuries on both sides. It is the most serious escalation since the second Lebanon war in 2006.

The Gaza war was triggered by Hamas and other groups’ brutal terrorist attacks against Israel when they rampaged through Israeli border towns on October 7, killing 1,200 people.