Families in Gaza are bracing for a fourth winter in tents and makeshift shelters as UN aid operations face mounting obstacles, with transport suspended on Tuesday due to Israel's closure of the key Kerem Shalom crossing for election day.
The UN project services agency in the field ( UNOPS ) reported three incidents affecting its convoys and premises over three consecutive days in the past week alone.
Executive Director Jorge Moreira da Silva said these included close-proximity explosions, drivers detained at checkpoints, and multiple small-arms rounds striking one of the procurement agency's guesthouses.
The safety of UNOPS staff has been compromised too many times, he said, stressing that all parties to the fighting in Gaza must uphold their obligations to protect civilians and humanitarian personnel.
Guterres condemns West Bank attacks
Meanwhile, Secretary-General António Guterres continues to express his deep alarm over the intensifying violence in the West Bank as an Israeli offensive in Hebron continues.
Associate Spokesperson Daniela Gross told journalists at the daily briefing in New York that the UN chief is following the situation there closely.
"He is deeply alarmed for this offensive…the intensifying violence in the West Bank. He condemns the violence. And he also firmly opposed the settler attacks in the region."
Between January 2025 and the end of September 2026, 331 Palestinians, including 77 children, were killed in the West Bank, and more than 42,000 have been displaced, according to the UN aid coordination office. OCHA . Over the same period, 21 Israelis were killed in the West Bank.
OCHA also recorded 3,684 attacks by Israeli settlers during the period that resulted in casualties or property damage.
Flood risk
Despite restrictions and funding shortfalls, the UN and its partners continue to bring limited supplies into Gaza. On Monday, UN teams brought in food, blankets, winter clothes, school items and fuel, according to OCHA.
Over the past week, partners distributed school bags to more than 8,000 children. The week before, they provided stationery to about 22,000 boys and girls and furnished some 300 classrooms supporting around 60,000 children.
Many families are living in deteriorating tents and shelters with little protection from the cold, wind and rain. Around 950,000 people are living in displacement sites at medium to high risk of flooding, and stocks of supplies to support them are insufficient, a shelter assessment found.
Media under attack
Also on Tuesday, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied, briefed journalists virtually on her latest report, which focuses on the media.
She reminded reporters that she was unable to attend in person because of sanctions imposed on her by the United States.
According to Ms. Albanese, nearly 300 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza, citing UN sources, and more than 100 have been detained, many of them tortured.
Some 150 media centres and offices - 80 per cent of Gaza's media infrastructure - have been destroyed, she said, while in the West Bank more than 139 attacks on journalists have recently been recorded.
She also criticized Israel's ban on foreign journalists entering Gaza and said there had been no accountability for the killing of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.
"The update is impunity," she said.
Her report also documents intimidation and repression of Palestinian journalists by Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, she said.
