The stranglehold on aid reaching Gaza threatens an \u201capocalyptic\u201d outcome, the UN\u2019s humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said on Sunday as he warned of famine in the besieged territory.
\n\u201cIf fuel runs out, aid doesn\u2019t get to the people where they need it, that famine, which we have talked about for so long, and which is looming, will not be looming anymore. It will be present,\u201d Griffiths said.
\nAn Israeli incursion into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, launched in the face of international outcry, has deepened an already perilous humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.
\nGriffith, the UN\u2019s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator said some 50 trucks of aid per day could reach the hardest-hit north of Gaza through the reopened Erez crossing.
\nThe UN said on Saturday that 800,000 people had been \u201cforced to flee\u201d Israel\u2019s assault on Hamas militants in Rafah.
\nWith fuel, food and medicine running out, Griffiths said the military action in the southern Gazan city was \u201cexactly what we feared it would be.\u201d
\nGriffiths said the maritime operation was \u201cbeginning to bring in some truckloads of aid\u201d but he cautioned \u201cit\u2019s not a replacement for the land routes.\u201d
\nThe war began after Hamas\u2019 unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of around 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli figures.
\nOut of 252 people taken hostage from Israel during the October 7 attack, 124 remain held in Gaza including 37 the army says are dead.
\nOn Thursday, the Arab League called for a UN peacekeeping force to be deployed in the Palestinian territories and for an international conference to resolve the Palestinian issue on the basis of the two-state solution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The stranglehold on aid reaching Gaza threatens an \u201capocalyptic\u201d outcome, the UN\u2019s humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said on Sunday as he warned of famine in the besieged territory. \u201cIf fuel runs out, aid doesn\u2019t get to the people where they need it, that famine, which we have talked about for so long, and which is …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22362"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22373,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22362\/revisions\/22373"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}