THE United States decision to slash funding for the UN relief agency for Palestinians risks deep cuts to services that could “push the suffering in disastrous and unpredictable directions,” secretary-general Antonio Guterres warned yesterday.

The UNRWA agency faces a £360 million budget black hole, which was made worse by the US decision.

The US had been the  largest UNRWA donor and announced in January that it would cut £45m this year. However, the agency said the true loss was about £215m as the US had initially promised a total of £260m.

It is the  worst UNRWA funding crisis in its 68-year existence. The agency provides healthcare, education and social services to about five million Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

Mr Guterres told a funding conference in Rome, organised by Jordan, that, if UNRWA is forced to cut its work on sanitation, healthcare and medical services in already poverty-wracked and conflict-ridden areas, it “would have severe impacts — a cascade of problems that could push the suffering in disastrous and unpredictable directions.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said that it was “vital … to address these very basic services but also to provide dignity for Palestinians.”

UNRWA head Pierre Kraehenbuehl said expectations in the region were high that donors would step up and come to the agency’s rescue.

“The message to the Palestinian refugees has to be that they are not forgotten. All eyes in the refugee camps throughout the Middle East are on this conference,” he said.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced from their homes during the ethnic cleansing carried out by zionist militias that preceded to Israel’s establishment in 1948.

Today, there are an estimated five million refugees and their descendants, mostly scattered across the Middle East.