By Michelle Nichols
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - United Nations aid operations in Gaza ground to a halt on Monday after Israel issued new evacuation orders on Sunday for Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip where the U.N. operations center was located, said a senior U.N. official.
The evacuation order came as the U.N. prepares to begin on Saturday a campaign to vaccinate an estimated 640,000 children in Gaza, where the World Health Organization (WHO) said a 10-month-old baby had been paralyzed by the type 2 poliovirus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.
"We're unable to deliver today with the conditions that we're in," said the senior U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "As of this morning, we're not operating in Gaza."
The United Nations had relocated its main operations center for the Gaza Strip and most U.N. personnel to Deir Al-Balah, the official said, after Israel ordered the evacuation of Rafah in the south of Gaza several months ago.
"Where do we move now?" said the official, adding that U.N. staff had to be moved so quickly that equipment was left behind.
The Israeli military's humanitarian unit (COGAT) did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The senior U.N. official said U.N. staff on the ground had been directed to try and find a way to keep operating. He said U.N. operations had not been formally suspended.
"We're not leaving (Gaza) because the people need us there," the official said. "We're trying to balance the need of the population with the need for safety and security of the U.N. personnel."
Sam Rose, a senior field director for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said UNRWA was still managing to deliver health and other services on Monday, but noted that while UNRWA operated differently to the rest of the U.N. system it still faced the same challenges.
"We are being squeezed into ever smaller areas of Gaza," he told reporters on Monday. "The humanitarian zone declared by Israel has shrunk. It's now about 11% of the entire Gaza Strip. But this isn't 11% of land that is fit for habitation, fit for services, fit for life."
FOOD AID HALVED
The current war in the Gaza Strip began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas gunmen stormed into Israeli communities, killing around 1,200 people and abducting about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Since then, Israel's military has leveled swathes of the Palestinian enclave, driving nearly all of its 2.3 million people from their homes, giving rise to deadly hunger and disease and killing at least 40,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities.
"The humanitarian response here is being completely strangled and limiting our ability of what we can do," said Louise Wateridge, spokesperson for UNRWA in Gaza, on Monday.
The U.N. has long complained of obstacles to getting aid into Gaza - Israel inspects and approves all trucks - and says it is also struggling to distribute aid amid "total lawlessness" within the enclave of 2.3 million people, where a global hunger monitor last month said there is a high risk of famine.
The U.N. World Food Program (WFP) said on Monday that in the past two months it "managed to bring in only half of the 24,000 metric tonnes of food aid required for operations serving 1.1 million people." WFP said it was hampered by worsening conflict, a limited number of border crossings and damaged roads.
Rose said that more than 3,000 people would work on the polio vaccination campaign that is due to start on Saturday.
"Over 1,000 of them drawn from UNRWA, which is essentially the largest primary health care provider left in the Gaza Strip. The vaccines have come in. We're calling for calm. We're calling for humanitarian pauses," he said.
(This story has been refiled to remove an extraneous word in paragraph 18)