Gaza: Relentless hostilities cause more deaths, displacement – OCHA update

04 June 2025

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Hostilities continued across Gaza over the past 24 hours, resulting in more deaths and damage to essential infrastructure.

Displacement also continues, with the latest figures indicating that in the past three weeks, more than 100,000 people were forced to flee in the governorates of North Gaza and Gaza alone.

Partners working in health warn that facilities are being heavily impacted by the ongoing hostilities. More and more medical facilities are suspending their operations. On Monday, the remaining staff and patients in the Indonesian Hospital, in North Gaza, were evacuated. As a result, not a single hospital remains functional in North Gaza.

Today in Gaza city, Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator Suzanna Tkalec visited Al Ahli hospital, which has sustained multiple attacks since the beginning of the war. Ms. Tkalec heard from staff about the challenges they are facing. They stressed that preventable deaths are occurring due to shortages of critical supplies, including antibiotics.

The Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator called for the protection of health facilities, the unrestricted flow of assistance into Gaza, and support for the UN and its partners to deliver at scale to alleviate people’s suffering. Ms. Tkalec said the UN and its partners are continuously appealing to the Israeli authorities to enable humanitarians to meaningfully address the crisis in Gaza.

While in Gaza city, she also visited Firas market, where she was briefed by the UN Development Programme on efforts to urgently address the issue of solid waste management.

Meanwhile, the UN and its partners continue to send supplies to Kerem Shalom crossing, where the Israeli authorities scan them before they can enter Gaza. For today, more than 130 pre-cleared truckloads were submitted for a second and final Israeli clearance, but only 50 of them – which were carrying flour – were approved.

Humanitarian teams are also working hard to collect supplies from Kerem Shalom and bring them closer to where people need them, inside Gaza. But these attempts are facing major hurdles. Just yesterday, one attempt was denied access altogether, and another managed to retrieve just over a dozen truckloads carrying flour.

Overall, since Kerem Shalom reopened, the UN and its partners have been able to collect fewer than 400 truckloads. This is despite their daily efforts to coordinate access and secure safe routes through the Israeli-militarized zone in the south.

That denied attempt to access Kerem Shalom was one of six access denials humanitarian teams faced yesterday across the Gaza Strip, out of a total 13 attempts. Such denials prevented these teams from carrying out interventions as critical as trucking water.

Another of yesterday’s six denied access attempts was to retrieve fuel, which is also urgently needed. Partners have rationed the supplies – but OCHA warns that without immediate access to fuel that is already inside Gaza but located in hard-to-reach areas that are either militarized or subject to displacement orders, more critical services will have to suspend operations soon.