UN agency head calls for temporary truce in besieged north Gaza

CAIRO: The UN Palestinian refugee agency called on Tuesday (Oct 22) for a temporary truce to allow people to leave areas of northern Gaza as health officials said they were running out of supplies to treat patients injured in a three-week-old Israeli assault.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UNRWA relief agency, said the humanitarian situation had reached a dire point, with bodies abandoned by roadsides or buried under rubble.
“In northern Gaza, people are just waiting to die,” he said in a statement on social media platform X. “They feel deserted, hopeless and alone.”
“I am calling for an immediate truce, even if for a few hours, to enable safe humanitarian passage for families who wish to leave the area & reach safer places,” he said.
The war in Gaza has devastated the Palestinian economy, which is now 35 per cent smaller than it was at the start of Israel’s invasion a year ago, the United Nations development agency said on Tuesday.
UNDP said quality of life indicators such as health and education had been knocked back 70 years to the 1950s.
In northern Gaza, residents said Israeli forces had besieged hospitals, schools, and other shelters housing displaced families and ordered them to leave and head south. They said forces detained dozens of men.