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‘The whole world has let us down’

Gaza’s displaced residents tell of fear, abandonment
REUTERS, Gaza
On foot, by horse-drawn cart and clinging to the sides of overcrowded trucks, Palestinians fled southwards through Gaza to escape Israeli air strikes, telling of their fear, despair and bitter sense of abandonment.
“Nowhere is safe in Gaza. My son was injured and there was not a single hospital I could take him to so he could get stitches,” said displaced Palestinian Ahmed al-Kahlout. “There is no water, there isn’t even salt water we can wash our hands with.”
He had been forced to leave his home to search for basic necessities for his family while “there are bodies filling Gaza’s streets”.
There are still people hoping the conflict will be solved soon, he said.
“But only God knows if it’ll be solved. The whole world has let us down, the progressive world that boasts about human rights has let us down.”
Also heading south, a Palestinian woman, Mariam al-Borno, said death, displacement and hunger had forced her and her children to leave home “to flee for our lives.”
“We saw death with our own eyes. Throughout it all we were afraid.”
People at a United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) school in Beit Lahia, where they had sought shelter, were looking at a crater left by an explosion.
“Even at UNRWA shelters we can’t find safety,” said one man.
“I’m just searching for a safe place, nothing more, to save myself and my children,” he said.
Outside Gaza’s largest hospital, Al Shifa, entertainer Alaa Miqdad gathered displaced children and put on a clown show.
“Despite the pain we are living in and the hurt, we will smile through the pain,” he said.
But Ismail al-Najjar, whose family’s residential compound in Khan Younis in the south was hit by an air strike, was less sanguine.
“I was coming with my horse, I stopped the horse, the aircraft came and fired something ... there was bombardment everywhere.”
“It is not just destruction; it is an earthquake ... I ask God to take vengeance on the killers of children,” he said.
Meanwhile, flags flew at half-mast at United Nations compounds across the globe yesterday, as staff observed a minute’s silence in memory of colleagues killed in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas conflict.
The blue and white UN flag was lowered at 9:30 am local time at offices in Bangkok, Tokyo and Beijing, a day after the world body reported “a significant number of deaths and injuries” in strikes on a facility in Gaza.
In Geneva, the second-largest UN headquarters after New York, the UN flag flew at half-mast and none of the other flags of the 193 member countries were hoisted along the main alley of the compound. Staff were also invited to hold a “private” minute of silence, spokesman Rolando Gomez said.
Events were also held in Kathmandu and Kabul, where the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan Roza Otunbayeva led about 250 people in observing the minute’s silence.
The UN agency for supporting Palestinians (UNRWA) announced on Friday that more than 100 of its employees had died in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war.
Established in 1949 following the first Arab-Israeli war, UNRWA provides public services including schools, healthcare and aid. Many of UNRWA’s 5,000 staff working in Gaza are Palestinian refugees themselves.