UNITED NATIONS, Feb 12 (NNN-XINHUA) – With the ceasefire allowing relief workers to expand services in Gaza, Israeli Zionist forces continue their deadly operations in the West Bank, impeding aid delivery, UN humanitarians said, yesterday.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said, the world body and its partners, continue to assess and respond to the impact of recent winter storms in the Gaza Strip.
“Dozens of families in Deir al Balah and the Al Mawasi area of Khan Younis have been affected, with makeshift shelters and tents reportedly damaged,” OCHA said.
The office said, humanitarians continue to expand their presence in areas that were off-limits during the hostilities. Partners supporting water, sanitation and hygiene services report that, as of Monday, 63 public water and sanitation facilities were operational in northern Gaza, three times as many as at the start of the ceasefire.
OCHA said, more than 540 water delivery points in the two northern governorates have been established, doubling capacity in just a week.
In Khan Younis, a UN partner launched an initiative to collect waste and clean bathrooms through a cash-for-work programme at collective centres for internally displaced people, managed by the UN relief agency for Palestinians (UNRWA), benefiting more than 2,800 people.
Humanitarians are scaling up the distribution of bread and cooked meals in different parts of Gaza.
Since Monday, an additional 20 retail shops in Khan Younis and the Middle area have been supplying bread. One partner distributed 1,100 one-month food rations to returnees in Khuza’a in Khan Younis, in the last two days, an inaccessible area before the ceasefire.
OCHA said, humanitarians are also working to address urgent shelter needs. Between Jan 24 and Friday, they distributed 25,000 tarpaulins to 12,500 families recently returning to northern Gaza.
More than a dozen new temporary learning spaces opened in Deir al Balah, Rafah, Khan Younis, and Gaza governorates last week. The sites support more than 1,700 school-aged children, who have returned or relocated.
OCHA said, there are more than 400 temporary learning spaces across the Gaza Strip, serving some 152,000 children, less than a quarter of school-aged children in the Gaza Strip.
In the West Bank, the humanitarian office said, Zionist Israeli operations continue in northern areas, causing further death, destruction and displacement among the civilian population. According to their estimate, tens of thousands of people, particularly those living in refugee camps, have been displaced due to the operations, depriving them of access to basic shelter and other public services.
OCHA said, there has been a significant increase in the number of Palestinian children killed in the West Bank, due to Israeli violence over the past two years, compared with the preceding 18 years since the office began systematically documenting casualties in 2005.
“Since Jan, 2023, 224 children have been murdered by the barbaric Israeli forces or settlers – accounting for nearly half of the total 468 child fatalities in the West Bank, documented by OCHA since 2005,” the office said. “These include 11 children murdered by the marauding Israeli forces, since the beginning of 2025.”– NNN-XINHUA
