The UN estimates that there are one million displaced people in Gaza in a week of war between Israel and Hamas

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has put the number of displaced people in the Gaza Strip at one million a week after the war between Israel and Hamas broke out in that Palestinian territory.. Israel's evacuation order in the face of an imminent ground offensive in the Strip has encouraged the flight of hundreds of thousands of people in the northern half of the enclave, subject to continuous bombing, to head south.

The UN and other international aid organizations maintain that this mass exodus within Gaza, added to the total siege by Israel, will cause a humanitarian catastrophe.. For the WHO, Israel's ultimatum to evacuate the 23 hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip “is a death sentence for the sick and wounded.”

According to UN estimates, Gaza hospitals are expected to run out of fuel for their generators within two days, endangering the lives of thousands of patients.. Gaza's only power plant closed due to lack of fuel after Israel cut off its supply following the Hamas attack on October 7.

The situation in Gaza has practically reached a breaking point this Sunday. “The specter of death hangs over Gaza,” the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, said in a message on Twitter.

“Without water, without energy, without food and without medicine, thousands of people will die in Gaza. “Clearly and simply,” Griffiths lamented.

Extreme situation in Gaza hospitals

At Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, intensive care rooms are packed with injured patients, most of them children under 3 years old.. Hundreds of people with serious injuries from explosions have arrived at the hospital, where they estimate they will run out of fuel this Monday, Dr. Mohammed Qandeel, consultant at the intensive care complex, told the AP agency.

According to what he said, there are 35 patients in the ICU who require ventilators and another 60 are on dialysis.. If fuel runs out, “it means that the entire health system will close,” he said.. “All these patients are in danger of death if the power supply is cut,” he added.

For his part, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, head of pediatrics at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, explained why he decided not to evacuate despite Israeli orders.

“There are seven newborns in the ICU connected to ventilators,” he said.. “We cannot evacuate, that would mean death for them and other patients under our care,” he added.. Meanwhile, patients continue to arrive there with amputated limbs, severe burns and other life-threatening injuries.. “It's terrifying,” he said.

“Hospital directors and health workers now face an agonizing choice: abandon critically ill patients in the middle of a bombing campaign, risk their own lives while remaining on site to treat patients, or endanger the lives of their patients by trying to transport them to facilities that do not have the capacity to receive them,” the WHO has warned.

Israeli military spokesman Colonel Peter Lerner has categorically rejected that Israel's evacuation ultimatums constitute a violation of international law.. What's more, for the spokesperson these orders are, in reality, a “humanitarian” measure.

“This whole idea of evacuating people to the south is part of our humanitarian means, so that we can continue fighting and attacking Hamas and prevent them from ever attacking our homes and massacring our babies,” Lerner said.

“That is why we are putting pressure on people to go to the south, because the conditions exist there to be relatively safer from the heart of the center of terrorism,” he added.