Infectious diseases in Gaza ‘spiralling out of control’, says WHO – Middle East live | Gaza

In June 2024, an Israeli missile struck 13-year-old Mazyouna Damoo’s apartment in Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, hurling her and her mother into the street.

Her younger sister, Tala, was pulled from beneath the rubble alive, but her other siblings – Hala, 13, and Mohannad, 10 – were killed instantly. Mazyouna survived, but half of her face was ripped off, leaving her jawbone exposed.

More than a year on, Mazyouna’s journey and ongoing recovery in a hospital in the US has become a rare story of hope from the two-year Gaza war that has now entered a ceasefire. But it was a recovery that almost never happened.

You can read her story here:

The United Nations said on Friday it would take time to reverse a famine in the Gaza Strip and urged the opening of all crossing points into the war-shattered Palestinian territory.

“It’s going to take some time to scale back the famine,” the UN World Food Programme’s (WFP) spokesperson Abeer Etefa told a media briefing in Geneva, saying the WFP had five distribution points up and running but wanted to get to 145 in order to “flood Gaza with food”.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday it has brought in about 560 tonnes of food per day on average into Gaza since ceasefire began, but it is still below what is needed.

WFP spokesperson Abeer Etefa told reporters in Geneva:

We’re still below what we need, but we’re getting there … The ceasefire has opened a narrow window of opportunity, and WFP is moving very quickly and swiftly to scale up food assistance.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that infectious diseases are “spiralling out of control”, with only 13 of the territory’s 36 hospitals even partially functioning.

“Whether meningitis … diarrhoea, respiratory illnesses, we’re talking about a mammoth amount of work,” Hanan Balkhy, regional director for the UN health body, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) in Cairo.

In a seperate update, the WHO in occupied Palestinian territory (WHOoPt), said on Thursday, via social media, that it had been scaling up deliveries of medical supplies to health facilities since the Gaza ceasefire came into effect.

WHOoPT wrote on X:

This week, more than 220 pallets of essential medicines and medical supplies were dispatched from our southern warehouse for partners supporting hospitals across Gaza.

Thanks to @eu_echo [European civil protection and humanitarian aid operations] for its continued support.

Turkey has deployed dozens of disaster relief specialists to help search for bodies under the mountains of rubble in Gaza, as US president Donald Trump fired a warning at Hamas on Thursday over a spate of recent killings in the territory.

Gaza’s civil defence agency estimates that the bodies of about 10,000 people are trapped under the debris and collapsed buildings. The task ahead of the rescuers is immense given an estimated 60m tonnes of rubble across the territory.

Trump characterised the killings as a breach of the ceasefire deal he spearheaded, under which the Palestinian militant group returned its last 20 surviving hostages to Israel, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Hamas says it has also handed back all the bodies of deceased captives it can access but the bodies of 19 more are still unaccounted for and believed to be buried under the ruins alongside an untold number of Palestinians.

Hamas stressed their “commitment” to the ceasefire deal with Israel, and that they want to return all the remaining bodies of hostages left in Gaza. But it said in a statement that the process “may require some time, as some of these corpses were buried in tunnels destroyed by the occupation, while others remain under the rubble of buildings it bombed and demolished”.

Turkey has sent staff from its disaster relief agency to help in locating the bodies but the families of the dead have criticised Hamas’s failure to deliver their loved ones’ remains.

The main campaign group advocating for the hostages’ families demanded on Thursday that Israel “immediately halt the implementation of any further stages of the agreement as long as Hamas continues to blatantly violate its obligations regarding the return of all hostages and the remains of the victims”.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu reaffirmed his determination to “secure the return of all hostages” after his defence minister warned on Wednesday that Israel “will resume fighting” if Hamas failed to do so.

Trump had appeared to call for patience when it came to the bodies’ return – insisting Hamas was “actually digging” for hostages’ remains – but later expressed frustration on Thursday with the group’s conduct since the fighting halted.

“If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them,” Trump said on Truth Social in an apparent reference to recent shootings of Palestinian civilians. Hamas has been accused of carrying out summary executions in Gaza since the ceasefire went into effect.

Clashes have also taken place between the group’s various security units and armed Palestinian clans, some of which are alleged to have Israeli backing, reports AFP.

In other developments:

• The plan also calls for renewed aid provision, with international organisations awaiting the reopening of southern Gaza’s Rafah crossing in the hope it will enable a surge of supplies. Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar said on the sidelines of a summit in Naples that preparations were being made for the strategic crossing, and that he “hoped” it would reopen on Sunday, Italian news agencies reported. Israel, however, said earlier on Thursday that the crossing would only be open to people, not aid, and Saar did not appear to elaborate, according to the reports.

• The World Health Organization has warned that infectious diseases are “spiralling out of control”, with only 13 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals even partially functioning. “Whether meningitis … diarrhoea, respiratory illnesses, we’re talking about a mammoth amount of work,” Hanan Balkhy, regional director for the UN health body, told AFP in Cairo.

• France and the UK, in coordination with the United States, are working to finalise a UN security council resolution in the coming days that would lay the foundation for a future international force in Gaza, France said on Thursday. With a shaky US-mediated ceasefire between Israel and Hamas holding, planning has begun for an international force to stabilise security in the Palestinian territory, two senior US advisers said on Wednesday.

• An Israeli airstrike targeting the top leaders of Yemen’s Houthi rebels in August killed the chief of staff of its military, officials said on Thursday, further escalating tensions between the group and Israel even as a ceasefire holds in the Gaza Strip.