“It has become a matter of life and death. It is a must; fuel needs to be delivered now into Gaza to make water available for 2 million people,” Commissioner-General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) Phillippe Lazzarini said in a statement Saturday.

Lazzarini highlighted the devastating impact of the blockade on Gaza, which has received no fresh humanitarian aid for one week now.

“Clean water is running out in the Gaza Strip, after its water plant and public water networks stopped working. People are now forced to use dirty water from wells, increasing risks of waterborne diseases. Gaza has also been under an electricity blackout since 11 October, impacting the water supply,” the statement read.

The UNRWA was forced to move its central operations from Gaza City to a location in southern Gaza following the Israeli evacuation order issued Friday. The agency warned that water is now “also running out” at its new location, as thousands of displaced civilians from northern Gaza continue to arrive.

“Only in the past 12 hours, hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced. The exodus continues as people move to the southern parts of the Gaza Strip. Nearly 1 million people have been displaced in one week alone,” the statement added.

“We need to truck fuel into Gaza now. Fuel is the only way for people to have safe drinking water. If not, people will start dying of severe dehydration, among them young children, the elderly and women. Water is now the last remaining lifeline,” Lazzarini continued, noting, “I appeal for the siege on humanitarian assistance to be lifted now.”

Injured persons are continuing to stream into hospitals in central Gaza as the Palestinian Ministry of Health announced Saturday that more than 2,200 civilians in the Gaza Strip have been killed in the hostilities.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health said 2,215 civilians, including 724 children and 458 women, have been killed since the conflict broke out one week ago.

The health ministry also added that 8,714 citizens have been injured in Gaza with varying degrees of injuries sustained. Among the injured are 2,450 children and 1,536 women.

The UNRWA also said no aid has so far reached the 2.3 million residents of Gaza, as medical supplies and fuel to power hospitals are running out. Some 220,000 displaced people are sheltering in schools run by the UN agency for Palestine refugees.

Bassim Khoury, CEO of the Pharmacare Group, stated Gaza has a few small factories producing medical supplies but that none of them were working.

“The situation for medicines is dire,” he told Al Jazeera. “Unless we can push for humanitarian relief into Gaza, it will be a catastrophe.”

Khoury added that his staff on the ground reported hospitals are facing a lack of fuel to power generators, including at Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest. Heavy bombardment also meant that many generators were destroyed or damaged.

“Gaza is under intense bombardment. Roads and homes have been reduced to rubble. There is nowhere safe to go,” Griffiths said on X, formerly Twitter.

“Forcing scared and traumatized civilians, including women and children, to move from one densely populated area to another, without even a pause in the fighting and without humanitarian support, is dangerous and outrageous.”

Israel’s military has delivered sweeping evacuation orders for almost half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people before an expected ground offensive.

He reiterated that “without safe passage and access to basic services, such mass displacement of civilians will have catastrophic humanitarian consequences and long-term implications.

Israel has also ordered a “complete siege” of crowded Gaza — including halting supplies of electricity, food, water, and fuel — while also bombarding the densely populated territory.

At least 2,200 Palestinians have been killed by near-constant shelling in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry, including journalists, medics and other civilians.

Hamas added the air raids hit evacuees at three locations: Salah Al-Din street, Sheikh Ahmed Yaseen street, and near Wadi Gaza.

Earlier, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza confirmed that “large numbers” of dead and injured people, including women and children, arrived at Al-Shifa Hospital — located in Al-Rimal neighborhood — after they were shelled on their way from northern Gaza to the south.

Israel’s military had delivered sweeping evacuation orders for almost half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people before an expected ground offensive.

In the blockaded enclave, the evacuation notice issued in the early hours of Friday sent panic through civilians and aid workers already struggling under intense Israeli airstrikes, and a blockade in which no food, fuel or medical supplies is being allowed in.

The UN considers the tightened siege a war crime.

More than 2,200 Palestinians, a third of them children, have been killed in the Israeli air rads, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

“To imagine that you could move one million people in 24 hours in a situation like Gaza can only be a humanitarian crisis,” Josep Borrell told a press conference in Beijing on Saturday.

“I am saying that, representing the official position of the European Union, … [Israel’s evacuation plan] is utterly, utterly impossible to implement,” he added.

Israel’s military on Friday ordered 1.1 million people living in northern Gaza to evacuate their homes, amid signs it is set to ramp up its offensive against Hamas following the group’s attacks that killed more than 1,300 people.

For six days, Israeli warplanes have pounded Gaza with airstrikes that have reduced streets and homes to rubble and killed more than 1,900 people, including 614 children and 370 women, and injured nearly 7,700 others, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

The World Health Organization and other United Nations bodies have joined a call for Israel’s military to rescind its order for all Palestinians to leave northern Gaza within 24 hours.

WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic said health authorities in Gaza have advised that it is impossible to evacuate vulnerable hospital patients within 24 hours as ordered by Israel’s military.

“There are severely ill people whose injuries mean their only chances of survival is being on life support, such as mechanical ventilators,” Jasarevic stated on Friday

“So moving those people is a death sentence. Asking health workers to do so is beyond cruel.”

Israel’s military on Thursday ordered 1.1 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza to move south within 24 hours ahead of an expected ground offensive on the enclave.

The United Nations has warned that the relocation of so many people is “impossible” and could have devastating consequences. The European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell has described Israel’s directive as “utterly unrealistic”.

Hamas, which runs the Gaza Stip, has told residents to ignore Israel’s order, describing it as “fake propaganda”.

The WHO has already warned that hospitals in Gaza are at “breaking point” and called for a humanitarian corridor to allow in health workers and facilitate the evacuation of the sick and injured.

Jasarevic said that hospitals have only a few hours of electricity each day and are being forced to rely on generators to power critical functions, with patients in intensive care units and newborns among the most vulnerable.

“Time is running out to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe, if fuel, water, food and life-saving health and humanitarian supplies cannot be urgently delivered to the Gaza Strip amidst the complete blockage,” he added.

Prior to the warning, more than 400,000 Palestinians had been internally displaced, the statement added.

Meanwhile, the World Food Programme (WFP) said it had distributed food to 135,000 people in shelters across Gaza on Friday, but warned “humanitarian supplies are running low.”

OCHA added that most people in Gaza now have no access to water.

“As a last resort, people are consuming brackish water from agricultural wells, triggering serious concerns about the spread of waterborne diseases,” it announced.

Israel’s military on Friday ordered 1.1 million people living in northern Gaza to evacuate their homes, amid signs it is set to ramp up its offensive against Hamas following the group’s attacks that killed more than 1,300 people.

For seven days, Israeli warplanes have pounded Gaza with airstrikes that have reduced streets and homes to rubble and killed more than 1,900 people, including 614 children and 370 women, and injured nearly 7,700 others, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, has also announced it will not evacuate its schools where hundreds of thousands have taken shelter. But it relocated its headquarters to southern Gaza, according to spokesperson Juliette Touma.

Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner general, has warned that “the scale and speed of the unfolding humanitarian crisis is bone-chilling”.

“Gaza is fast becoming a hellhole and is on the brink of collapse,” he stated.

Pressed by reporters on whether the Israeli army would protect hospitals, UN shelters, and other civilian locations, Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari stated the military would keep civilians safe “as much as we can”.

But he warned: “It’s a war zone.”