LONON: British Minister of State for the Middle East Tariq Ahmad will visit Bahrain and Qatar to discuss the war in Gaza, the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) said on Saturday.
In a statement, the FCDO said that Tariq Ahmad will hold meetings with his Middle East counterparts, including the Arab League’s Secretary Geneal. The trip follows London’s commitment of an additional $37.38 million in humanitarian help to Palestinian people, the FCDO said.
The development comes as UNRWA warned that humanitarian operations will start to collapse this week due to lack of fuel in the Gaza Strip. It is needed to power numerous sides of the aid effort, including desalination processes, healthcare equipment, electricity generation, and the trucks used to provide the vital aid that arrives at the Rafah border crossing to Gaza.
War on Gaza
Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, the UN’s special rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water also said that every hour that passes with Israel stopping the provision of clean drinking water in Gaza, in shameless breach of global law, puts people at risk of dying of thirst and different diseases related to the lack of clean drinking water. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East stated that the entire exhaustion of fuel supplies in the Gaza Strip, and the subsequent lack of power, is having shocking effects, including the total breakdown of water supplies, sanitation services, sewage-management systems, communications networks and health facilities.
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He said that consciously stopping supplies required for clean water from entering Gaza violates both global humanitarian and human rights law. According to the UN, around 70 percent of people in the Gaza Strip are having to drink contaminated water to survive. Israel must permit clean water and fuel supplies into the Gaza Strip “before it is too late,” he warned as and called on Israel to halt using water as a “weapon of war.”
