News - Middle East: Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), says that its staff, as well as doctors and humanitarian workers, are collapsing from hunger in Gaza amid Israel's total aid blockade and aggression.

“Many are now fainting due to hunger and exhaustion while performing their duties: reporting atrocities or alleviating some of the suffering,” the UNRWA commissioner general said in a statement on Tuesday. 

“No one is spared: caretakers in Gaza are also in need of care. Doctors, nurses, journalists and humanitarians are hungry,” Lazzarini added. 

He said UNRWA had received dozens of emergency messages from its staff describing grave conditions and exhaustion in the blockaded Palestinian territory.

Lazzarini also censured a US-backed aid distribution scheme run by the Israel-US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) that has been "supplying aid" in the besieged territory since late May.

“The so-called ‘GHF’ distribution scheme is a sadistic death trap. Snipers open fire randomly on crowds as if they are given a license to kill,” Lazzarini stated.

The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies and largely bypasses a UN-led system.

More than 1,000 people have been reported killed while trying to receive food aid since the end of May, Lazzarini noted.

The United Nations, its affiliated agencies and other humanitarian organizations have said on numerous occasions that they cannot confirm any of the GHF’s claims regarding food distribution in Gaza.

Since May 27, 2025, thousands of Palestinians have been killed and wounded by Israeli gunfire as they approached the GHF distribution installations.

In late June 2025, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the Israeli regime’s forces had received orders to fire on the unarmed aid seekers to “keep them away from food distribution centers.”

The UN and other humanitarian groups have criticized the GHF for politicizing aid distribution, saying it is giving cover for Israel to pursue its aims to depopulate Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.

In the past 24 hours, 15 people, including four children, have died in Gaza due to starvation and malnutrition.

The US-Israeli genocide, which began in October 2023, has so far killed more than 59,000 Palestinians, leaving over 142,500 others injured.

Press TV