At least 20 humanitarians from the United Nations and Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement have been killed in Gaza, the UN said. Supplies continue to dwindle in what the agency described as "utter catastrophe".
Of those killed, 15 staffers were from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and five were from the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, according to Joyce Msuya, the assistant secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and deputy emergency relief coordinator at the UN.
UNRWA schools shelter more than half of the displaced population in central - -south Gaza, according to Msuya, but will only be able to operate small desalination plants in those shelters "for a few more days" without more fuel.
The UNRWA secured five trucks worth of fuel to operate Gaza's main seawater desalination plans on Monday, but that will only keep facilities operating "for a week or so", the UN said.
"Fuel reserves at Gaza's hospitals have also been almost totally depleted", Msuya said in a statement "20 out of 23 hospitals in Gaza were already only offering partial services. As generators and back-up generators run dry, critical life systems will shut down and these hospitals - which are filled with the chronically ill and civilian casualties for war - will be thrust into darkness".
Hospitals in Gaza have entered a stage of "actual collapse" due to electricity cuts and fuel shortages, a spokesperson from the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza said earlier Tuesday.
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