The head of the UN agency to assist Palestine refugees Philippe Lazzarini said that Israel has again prevented him from entering the Gaza Strip, reported France Press, quoted by BTA.
"The Israeli authorities continue to deny the UN humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip," Lazzarini said in "X".
"Just this week they refused me, and this is the second time, to enter Gaza," he added.
Lazzarini has visited the Gaza Strip four times since the start of Israel's war against Hamas, which began on October 7 after the attack by Hamas. against Israel.
"In the last two weeks alone, we have reported ten incidents involving firing on convoys, arrests of UN personnel, harassment, stripping, threats of weapons and long waits at convoy checkpoints, which forces them to drive at night or refuse to travel," Lazzarini said.
He also called for an independent investigation into the firing of rockets by Palestinian armed groups at the Kerem Shalom crossing, through which humanitarian aid mainly passes from Israel to Gaza, and which led to its closure by the Israeli army.
The Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, claimed responsibility for firing rockets at the checkpoint and said they targeted Israeli soldiers.
Israel accuses a dozen of the UN agency's roughly 13,000 staff in Gaza of taking part in the attack carried out by "Hamas" against Israel on October 7. In late April, an independent panel concluded in a report that the agency suffered from a lack of neutrality in the Gaza Strip, but that Israel had not provided evidence to support claims that some of the agency's employees were linked to terrorist organizations such as Hamas. The report said the agency was indispensable and needed by the Palestinians.
This evening the Israeli military said its warplanes struck a "command center" of "Hamas" in the Gaza Strip, which the Palestinian movement had "deliberately located near an operational site of the Palestine Refugee Agency, endangering the civilians who took refuge there".
This structure was used by "Hamas" "as a site for multiple attacks against Israeli troops /.../in recent weeks" and "for attacks on humanitarian operations aimed at increasing the distribution of aid to the people of Gaza,", the military added.