Ramallah, The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has affirmed that the destruction level arising from the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip is incredibly significant and will require over 20 years to be reconstructed.
In remarks published by Palestinian News Agency (Wafa), UNRWA Commissioner-General, Philippe Lazzarini, said reconstruction will be a profoundly enormous task in this case, especially the education system, in addition to receiving the children and ensuring their return to schools and reconstructing the damaged clinics.
Lazzarini alluded the difficulty of Gaza reconstruction to the massive devastation, along with the people who live among the rubble and places that are packed with unexploded ordnance and unexploded bombs (UXBs). He highlighted that UNRWA paid extraordinary price due to war and lost 192 of its personnel since Oct. 7, a figure that has never been witnessed since the establishment of the United Nations in 1945.
He highlighted
that roughly 170 UNRWA facilities in the Gaza Strip were bombed, and decimated to varying degrees, primarily schools where education system was brought to standstill, resulting in converting schools into shelters for the Palestinians who were seeking safe refuge at UN-flagged shelters.
Lazzarini underlined that UNRWA will proceed with its mission in Gaza despite the Israeli calls for replacing it with other UN agencies, stressing that UNRWA is assigned by the UN General Assembly and has a very limited mission.
Since Oct. 7, 2023, the Israeli occupation’s extreme and unprecedented genocide on the Gaza Strip continues from all sides (air, land and sea), murdering at least 37,084 Palestinians and injuring at least 84,494 others, while thousands of victims remain under the rubble.
Source: Qatar News Agency