Israel’s relentless bombardment has decimated Gaza’s medical, housing, sanitation and nutritional infrastructure.   

After 100 days of Israel’s indiscriminate destruction of the Gaza Strip, the Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) has condemned the violent occupier for inflicting “hell” upon innocent Palestinian civilians.

In a statement released on Monday, NRC chief Jan Egeland decried the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza as “one of the worst humanitarian crises faced by any civilian population this century.”

Israel’s relentless bombardment has decimated the enclave’s medical, housing, sanitation and nutritional infrastructure.

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, at least 2.2 million people in Gaza are in a “crisis,” or worse, phase of food insecurity.

“Virtually all Palestinians in Gaza are skipping meals every day while many adults go hungry so children can eat,” a UNRWA news release said on Monday.

The surviving infrastructure is also critically limited, UNRWA warned.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ latest impact report published on Monday, just one out of the three water pipelines from Israel to Gaza is functional. 

This is a tragic decrease from an earlier UN OCHA impact report published on Sunday, which said two pipelines were working.

The enclave’s northern governorates are also completely cut off from fresh water supplies.

Gaza’s estimated 60,834 injured and wounded are also forced to seek treatment from just 15 partially functional medical facilities. Worse still, Israel continues to target the Strip’s hospitals — which has previously forced humanitarian missions, such as Doctors Without Borders, to withdraw their personnel away from Israel’s line of fire.

A crippling national healthcare sector and lack of access to sanitation facilities and clean water intensifies the risk of infectious diseases spreading rapidly among Gaza’s almost two million internally displaced people.

Gaza’s 335,000 children under the age of five are especially vulnerable.

Egeland has denounced Israel’s atrocities as a “stain” on its imagery, as well as the nations who have been complicit in supplying the aggressor with arms or lending it political support.

“For over three months, the agony of innocent Palestinians in Gaza has been broadcast around the globe, and world leaders have continually failed to prevent the immense civilian suffering,” he added.

His statement concluded with his calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities.

“An immediate and sustained ceasefire is the only hope for an end to this haemorrhaging of human life, and for a resumption of lifesaving relief across Gaza,” he said.