Several tonnes of aid have managed to reach the northern Gaza Strip, which has borne the brunt of Israel’s military assault against Hamas during the temporary ceasefire.

On Tuesday, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that the supplies include ready-to-eat meals, drinking water, tents and blankets, and medicines.

OCHA fuel for electricity production and supplies for the operations of desalination and sewage treatment plants and water pumping stations had also been delivered.

This and other critical infrastructure had been shut down due to a lack of electricity. Until the truce went into effect last week, little fuel to operate generators had made it into the mostly sealed-off coastal territory.

The badly damaged al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City has reopened its dialysis unit for patients with kidney disease thanks to the fuel shipments.

Despite Israeli calls to evacuate from the north of the Gaza Strip, it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people are still living there in often dire conditions.

OCHA said drinking water is being supplied to people in the south via two pipes from Israel. 

The Palestinian death toll from Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip since October 7 stands at some 15,000, according to figures from the Hamas-run Health Ministry.

The figure cannot be independently confirmed.

Israel has waged an air and ground assault on Gaza to eliminate Hamas. The Islamist group massacred 1,200 people in southern Israel and took some 240 others hostage on October 7, in what Israel says was the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust.

The UN agency said around 1.8 million of the more than 2.2 million Gaza residents are estimated to have been displaced by attacks and the destruction of their homes.

Around 1.1 million people have found refuge in overcrowded facilities run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

A further 190,000 people were camped out in schools, festival halls or community centres, while the others were accommodated with host families.

According to UN estimates, 46,000 homes have been destroyed and more than 234,000 damaged. This corresponds to a total of 60 per cent of the housing stock. 

(dpa/NAN)