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UNRWA Situation Report #91 on the situation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem - All information from 14 - 16 March 2024, is valid as of 16 March 2024 at 22:30

UNRWA

17 Mar 2024

Key Points

The Gaza Strip

• Intense Israeli Security Forces (ISF) bombardment from the air, land and sea continued across much of the Gaza Strip, resulting in further civilian casualties, displacement and destruction of civilian infrastructure. ISF airstrikes continue also in heavily populated Rafah in southern Gaza.

• On 15 March, UNICEF[1] reported the number of children under the age of two suffering from acute malnutrition is increasing at an alarming rate in the northern Gaza Strip. One in three children are now malnourished, compared to 15.6 per cent in January 2024. In addition to the north, concerns remain in Rafah, Middle Areas and Khan Younis, where screenings conducted for the first time in Khan Younis, in the central Gaza Strip, revealed that 28 per cent of children under the age of two were acutely malnourished and more than 10 per cent severely wasted. Malnourished children in Gaza are also at high risk of medical complications and death if they do not receive urgent therapeutic food and appropriate treatment which are currently unavailable in Gaza. According to UNICEF, at least 23 children have reportedly died of malnutrition and dehydration in recent weeks in the north of the Gaza Strip. Another 13,450 children in the Gaza Strip have been killed during the war.

• Access to people in Gaza City and Northern Gaza remains very restricted. According to OCHA, only 25 per cent of aid missions planned to the north in February had been facilitated by Israeli Authorities.

• The first 15 days of March saw an average of 165 aid trucks per day crossing into the Gaza Strip. This remains well below the operational capacity of both border crossings and the target of 500 per day, with challenges at both Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) and Rafah. Security to manage the crossings has been severely impacted due to the killing of several Palestinian policemen in Israeli airstrikes near the crossings in early February.

• As of 16 March, the total number of UNRWA colleagues killed since the beginning of hostilities is 168, an increase of two since the last UNRWA sit rep.

• As of 16 March, up to 1.7 million* people (over 75 per cent of the population) ** have been displaced across the Gaza Strip, some multiple times.*** Families are forced to move repeatedly in search of safety. Following intense Israeli bombardments and fighting in Khan Younis and the Middle Area in recent weeks, a significant number of displaced people have moved further south.

*This includes 1 million individuals residing in or near emergency shelters or informal shelters. As of 12 October, approximately 160,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) were recorded in UNRWA shelters in Northern Gaza and Gaza City governorates. UNRWA currently estimates that the population of Northern Gaza and Gaza City governorates is up to 250,000 people. The ability of UNRWA to provide humanitarian support and updated data in these areas has been severely restricted. The ongoing hostilities, evacuation orders issued by ISF, and the constant need for safer locations have resulted in people being displaced multiple times.

**UNRWA reported on 15 January in Situation Report 64 that up to 1.9 million IDPs were either residing in 154 UNRWA shelters or near these shelters. Due to the continued escalation of fighting and evacuation orders, some households have moved away from the shelters where they were initially registered.

*** There are instances where the same IDPs are registered in multiple shelters due to the fluid movement of populations; hereafter, estimates are used for these shelters. UNRWA plans to conduct a more accurate count of IDPs in shelters, including informal shelters, as soon as the security situation allows.

[1] Acute malnutrition doubles in the space of a month in the northern Gaza Strip - UNICEF - occupied Palestinian territory | ReliefWeb