UN Chief Says It’s Time to ‘Truly Flood’ Gaza with Aid, Calls Starvation There an Outrage

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres speaks to the media at El-Arish International Airport in Egypt's northeastern province of North Sinai on March 23, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict in the Palestinian Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas. (AFP)
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres speaks to the media at El-Arish International Airport in Egypt's northeastern province of North Sinai on March 23, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict in the Palestinian Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas. (AFP)
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UN Chief Says It’s Time to ‘Truly Flood’ Gaza with Aid, Calls Starvation There an Outrage

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres speaks to the media at El-Arish International Airport in Egypt's northeastern province of North Sinai on March 23, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict in the Palestinian Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas. (AFP)
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres speaks to the media at El-Arish International Airport in Egypt's northeastern province of North Sinai on March 23, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict in the Palestinian Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas. (AFP)

UN Secretary-General António Guterres stood near a long line of waiting trucks Saturday and declared it was time to “truly flood Gaza with lifesaving aid," calling the starvation inside the enclave a “moral outrage.” He urged an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

Guterres spoke on the Egyptian side of the border not far from the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where Israel plans to launch a ground assault despite widespread warnings of a potential catastrophe. More than half of Gaza's population has taken refuge there.

“Any further onslaught will make things even worse — worse for Palestinian civilians, worse for hostages and worse for all people in the region," Guterres said.

He spoke a day after the UN Security Council failed to reach consensus on the wording of a US-sponsored resolution supporting “an immediate and sustained ceasefire.”

Guterres repeatedly noted the difficulties of getting aid into Gaza, for which international aid agencies have largely blamed Israel.

“Here from this crossing, we see the heartbreak and heartlessness … a long line of blocked relief trucks on one side of the gates, the long shadow of starvation on the other,” he said.

About 7,000 aid trucks are waiting in Egypt's North Sinai province to enter Gaza, Gov. Mohammed Abdel-Fadeil Shousha said in a statement.

Guterres added: “It is time for an ironclad commitment by Israel for total … access for humanitarian goods to Gaza, and in the Ramadan spirit of compassion, it is also time for the immediate release of all hostages.” He later told journalists that a humanitarian ceasefire and hostage release should occur at the same time.

Hamas is believed to be holding around 100 hostages as well as the remains of 30 others taken in its Oct. 7 attack that killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and sparked the war.

When asked about Guterres' comments, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to a social media post by Foreign Minister Israel Katz accusing the UN chief of allowing the world body to become “antisemitic and anti-Israeli.”

An estimated 1.5 million Palestinians now shelter in Rafah after fleeing Israel's offensive elsewhere.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday said an Israeli ground assault on Rafah would be “a mistake” and unnecessary in defeating Hamas. That marked a shift in the position for the United States, whose officials have concluded there is no credible way for getting civilians out of harm’s way.

Netanyahu has vowed to press forward with military-approved plans for the offensive, which he has said is crucial to achieving the stated aim of destroying Hamas. The military has said Rafah is Hamas’ last major stronghold and ground forces must target four battalions remaining there.

Israel’s invasion has killed more than 32,000 people, according to Gaza health officials, while leaving much of the enclave in ruins and displacing some 80% of the enclave's 2.3 million people. Gaza's Health Ministry said Saturday that the bodies of 72 people killed had been brought to hospitals in the past 24 hours.

The Health Ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants, but has said women and children make up the majority of the dead. Israel blames Hamas for civilian deaths and accuses it of operating within residential areas.

Fighting raged Saturday around Gaza’s largest hospital. Israel's military says it has killed more than 170 militants in Shifa hospital since its raid began Monday, and the commanding officer of the Southern Command, Yaron Finkelman, on Friday said: “We will finish this operation only when the last terrorist is in our hands."

Nearby Gaza City residents told The Associated Press that Israeli troops had blown up several residential buildings.

“They are emptying the whole area," said Abdel-Hay Saad, who lives on the western edge of Gaza City’s Rimal neighborhood. Another resident, Mohammed al-Sheikh, said that intense Israeli bombardment was “hitting anything moving.”

Associated Press footage showed columns of smoke billowing over the hospital area.

The Health Ministry said five wounded Palestinians trapped at Shifa had died without food, water, medical services. It previously said Israel's military had detained health workers, patients and relatives inside the complex. The military claimed it wasn't harming civilians, patients or workers.

“These conditions are utterly inhumane,” the World Health Organization's director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on social media late Friday,

Elsewhere, an older woman and five children were killed overnight in an Israeli airstrike on an area between Rafah and Khan Younis, health authorities said.

Hunger has become deadly, too. The UN and Israel's government again traded allegations over the lack of aid delivery to northern Gaza, the first target of Israel's offensive in the war and where anguished parents have reported watching children scavenge for bread in the rubble.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees — “the backbone of assistance in Gaza,” Guterres said — alleged that Israel had again denied permission for an aid convoy to deliver to northern Gaza. The agency known as UNRWA said that two months have passed since a convoy could reach there.

Israel's government replied by alleging again that hundreds of aid trucks were waiting for the UN and partners to distribute it.

“No time for misinformation. Enough," UNRWA spokesperson Juliette Touma told the AP in response.



UN Says 23 Aid Trucks Were Plundered in Central Gaza

File photo: A truck carries humanitarian aid destined for the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, at the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Israel, November 11, 2024. REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo
File photo: A truck carries humanitarian aid destined for the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, at the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Israel, November 11, 2024. REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo
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UN Says 23 Aid Trucks Were Plundered in Central Gaza

File photo: A truck carries humanitarian aid destined for the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, at the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Israel, November 11, 2024. REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo
File photo: A truck carries humanitarian aid destined for the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, at the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Israel, November 11, 2024. REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo

The UN food agency reports that 23 trucks in a 66-truck convoy carrying food and other humanitarian supplies to central Gaza were plundered and lost.
UN associate spokesperson Stephanie Tremblay said Monday that the World Food Program convoy departed from the Kerem Shalon crossing via the recently approved Philadelphi Corridor on Sunday.
Despite Israeli assurances that safety conditions would be in place, she said an airstrike took place.
Tremblay said the first 35 trucks made it to a WFP warehouse without losses, reported The Associated Press.
She said the Israeli army delayed the rest of the convoy.
News of the convoy’s movement spread, Tremblay said, leading to plundering along the way, with a total of 43 trucks making it to the warehouse while 23 others were lost.
She called it “another example of why we continue to stress the need for the safe, unimpeded passage of assistance to reach populations that need it the most.”