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The United Nations on Thursday released a further $2.5 million from a pooled humanitarian fund to cover urgent needs in Gaza, as it continues to deal with electricity shortages.
“The serious decline in living conditions in Gaza continues,” said UN Coordinator for Humanitarian Aid and Development Activities for Gaza, Robert Piper, in a press release.
The disbursement from the Humanitarian Fund will bolster the UN's emergency fuel operation which primarily supplies fuel to generators to maintain operations in around 190 critical health, water and sanitation installations, according to the statement.
The funding will also provide essential life-saving medical equipment and supplies. Solar panels, cash assistance and agricultural supplies that are also included to improve food security and reduce food production costs for 2,200 small-scale farmers who irrigate by pumping from small wells.
Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas is trying to pressure Gaza's Hamas rulers to return control of Gaza to his Fatah movement, most notably by cutting electricity supplies to Gaza through Israel.
Egypt delivered a million liters of fuel to the station in late June, but power supplies took a fresh hit shortly thereafter, as Hamas accused the PA of blocking fuel payments to Egypt from going through banks.
In early July, said the UN statement, humanitarian partners in Gaza identified an urgent set of top-priority interventions to respond to the current crisis and appealed for $25 million. To date, this urgent funding appeal is only 30 per cent funded.
“The humanitarian plight and the human rights of Gaza's civilian population - over half of them children – appear to have disappeared from view,” Piper said.