UN Humanitarian Chief Slams Israel for Exacerbating Gaza Famine
(MENAFN) On Friday, the UN’s top humanitarian official denounced the famine currently gripping the Gaza Governorate, calling it a "predictable and preventable" disaster exacerbated by Israel's obstruction of aid.
"It is a famine that we could have prevented if we had been allowed. Yet, food stacks up at borders because of systematic obstruction by Israel. It is a famine within a few hundred meters of food in a fertile land," Tom Fletcher, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said in a press briefing in Geneva.
Fletcher went on to describe the crisis as a "21st century famine watched over by drones and the most advanced military technology in history."
"It is a famine openly promoted by some Israeli leaders as a weapon of war," he added. "It is a famine on all of our watch. Everyone owns this, the Gaza famine is the world's famine."
The humanitarian toll of the crisis remains staggering. Fletcher highlighted the severe impact on Gaza’s most vulnerable populations, noting that the famine forces parents to make unimaginable choices about which child to feed, and drives people to risk their lives in search of sustenance.
His call to action was urgent: "Enough. Ceasefire, open the crossings, north and south, all of them. Let us get food and other supplies in unimpeded and at the massive scale required. End the retribution."
"It is too late for far too many, but not for everyone in Gaza," he continued.
Fletcher's remarks followed the confirmation from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), which officially declared famine in the Gaza Governorate, one of the five regions in the Gaza Strip. Since October 2023, Israel has killed over 62,000 Palestinians in the ongoing conflict.
The global hunger monitor has warned that the famine is likely to spread to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis within weeks, further deepening the humanitarian catastrophe.
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