UN agency head calls for temporary truce in besieged north Gaza | U.S. & World [Video]

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

CAIRO (Reuters) -The U.N. Palestinian refugee agency called on Tuesday for a temporary truce to allow people to leave areas of northern Gaza as health officials said they were running out of supplies to treat patients injured in a three-week-old Israeli assault.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UNRWA relief agency, said the humanitarian situation had reached a dire point, with bodies abandoned by roadsides or buried under rubble.

“In northern Gaza, people are just waiting to die,” he said in a statement on X. “They feel deserted, hopeless and alone.”

“I am calling for an immediate truce, even if for a few hours, to enable safe humanitarian passage for families who wish to leave the area & reach safer places,” he said.

The call came as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel for talks in which he urged its leaders to capitalise on the military’s killing last …