UN Secretary General António Guterres on Wednesday welcomed a deal to release hostages taken during the Hamas terror attack on Israel.
He said that the UN stood ready to “maximise” the positive humanitarian impact of the agreement
“This is an important step in the right direction, but much more needs to be done,” Guterres said via a statement from his spokesperson Farhan Haq.
The top UN official leading efforts to secure a lasting peace in the Middle East, Tor Wennesland, echoed those comments and also welcomed the announced 96-hour “humanitarian pause” in war-shattered Gaza.
“This pause must be used to its fullest extent to facilitate the release of hostages and alleviate the dire needs of Palestinians in Gaza.”
The development comes as UN humanitarians reiterated that they remain ready to seize the opportunity to ramp up lifesaving aid to the enclave.
Following the four-day ceasefire announcement the UN World Health Organisation (WHO) issued fresh calls for safe, unimpeded humanitarian access in the Strip.
“The fighting needs to stop so that we can quickly scale up our response,” Dr Ahmed Al-Mandhari, WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean said.
“We cannot keep providing drops of aid in Gaza in an ocean of need.”
Meanwhile, WHO said that a new evacuation was under way at Gaza City’s embattled Al-Shifa hospital, with more to follow in northern Gaza.
According to media reports, the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was due to begin within 24 hours of its announcement.
In his statement, Wennesland welcomed the efforts of the Governments of Egypt, Qatar and the United States in “facilitating” the agreement.
WHO’s representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Dr. Richard Peeperkorn, said that any news of a humanitarian pause and of a release of hostages was welcome, but that a true end to the fighting was needed.
At the same WHO press conference in Cairo, Dr. Al-Mandhari called for a “permanent ceasefire” and said that the parties to the conflict should “put the welfare and health of their people as their first priority”.
The UN health agency official also led a minute of silence to honour WHO Staffer Dima Alhaji. Killed in Gaza on Tuesday, along with many relatives.
“As we grieve, we are reminded of the senseless nature of this conflict and of the fact that in Gaza today nowhere is safe for civilians, including our own UN colleagues,” he said.
Since the start of Israel’s retaliation of Hamas’ October 7 massacres which left 1,200 dead in southern Israel and some 240 hostages abducted, 108 UN staff members have been killed in the Strip.
Peeperkorn revealed on Wednesday that a mission was under way in close coordination with humanitarian partners the Palestinian Red Crescent and Médecins Sans Frontières, to evacuate patients and health workers remaining in Al-Shifa.
The mission follows the initial inter-agency evacuation of 31 premature babies on Sunday.
Out of the 220 patients and 200 health workers still at the hospital, the priority evacuees would be 21 dialysis patients, 29 patients with spinal injuries and those in intensive care, Dr. Peeperkorn said.
He also informed that in the meantime, the UN health agency has received evacuation requests from three other hospitals in northern Gaza: Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, Al-Awda Hospital and the Indonesian Hospital, and planning was under way, with WHO and its partners sparing no efforts to “make sure this happens in the coming days”.
He explained that such evacuations are only undertaken upon request and as a last resort.
Al-Mandhari deplored the fact that even hospitals are not being protected from the “horrors” of the conflict in Gaza.
WHO has documented 178 attacks on healthcare in the Strip since 7 October and out of the enclave’s 36 hospitals 28 are not functional anymore, his colleague Peeperkorn told journalists.
The eight remaining hospitals, all in the south, are “overwhelmed”, he said, and all efforts must be made to keep them functional and expand their bed capacity.
The enclave had some 3,500 hospital beds prior to the current escalation and that number is now down to less than 1,400.
The perspective of a ceasefire has raised hopes for improved access to desperate Gazan civilians and an increase in the volume of relief items coming through.
