People starving and dead bodies left in the streets: This is the dire picture of conditions in northern Gaza painted by a top UN official in charge of relief operations in the enclave. <\/p>\n
\u201cColleagues who have managed to make it to the north in recent days describe scenes of utter horror: Corpses left lying in the road. People with evident signs of starvation stopping trucks in search of anything they can get to survive,\u201d Martin Griffiths, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, told members of the UN Security Council on Friday. <\/p>\n
\u201cEven if people were able to return home, many no longer have homes to go to,\u201d he said, adding shelters are already housing far more people than they can cope with. <\/p>\n
The risk of famine grows by the day as food and water is running out, he said, while the health system is \u201cin a state of collapse.\u201d <\/p>\n
Women are unable to give birth safely and children cannot get vaccinated, with cases of infectious diseases on the rise and people seeking shelter in hospital yards, he said. <\/p>\n
Aid has been trickling into Gaza slowly from two border crossings in the south. <\/p>\n
On Thursday, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Israel had denied critical supplies from entering northern Gaza. But Israel has accused the UN\u2019s Palestinian refugee agency of not doing enough and \u201cstalling\u201d the progress. <\/p>\n
In a stinging criticism, Griffiths said his team\u2019s efforts to send humanitarian convoys to the north \u201chave been met with delays, denials, and the imposition of impossible conditions,\u201d while \u201cthe lack of respect for the humanitarian notification system puts every movement of aid workers in danger.\u201d <\/p>\n
Efforts to provide\u00a0humanitarian assistance to other parts of the enclave have also been badly impacted. \u201cOur access to Khan Younis and the middle area is largely absent,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
The UN official also laid into Israel\u2019s policy of telling people to leave their homes ahead of increased military operations. <\/p>\n
\u201cOrders for evacuation are unrelenting. As ground operations move southwards, aerial bombardments have intensified in areas where civilians were told to relocate for their safety,\u201d Griffiths said, with people being forced to \u201can ever-smaller sliver of land, only to find yet more violence and deprivation, inadequate shelter and a near absence of the most basic services.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no safe place in Gaza. Dignified human life is a near impossibility,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Up to 1.9 million people, representing 85% of the population in Gaza, have been displaced, some multiple times, since the conflict began, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. <\/p>\n
But Griffiths also reminded UN Security Council members of Hamas\u2019 attack on Israel. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhile Gaza is the epicenter of this crisis, let us not forget the 1,200 people killed, thousands injured, and hundreds taken in the brutal attack by Hamas and other armed groups on Israel on October 7, and the accounts of abhorrent sexual violence,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Rocket fire continues to pound populated areas of Israel, \u201ccausing more civilian casualties and trauma,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we have seen since October 7 is a stain on our collective conscience. Unless we act, it will become an indelible mark on our humanity,\u201d Griffiths said. <\/p>\n\n
People starving and dead bodies left in the streets: This is the dire picture of conditions in northern Gaza painted by a top UN official in charge of relief operations in the enclave. \u201cColleagues who have managed to make it to the north in recent days describe scenes of utter horror: Corpses left lying in <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":14013,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14012","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}