2024-01-06 13:44:00
Gazans face ‘highest levels of food insecurity ever recorded’, says UN aid chief
Famine is “just around the corner” as Gaza’s people face “the highest levels of food insecurity ever recorded,” according to Martin Griffiths, the United Nations’ top emergency relief official.
(Credit: Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images)
Griffiths says Gaza has become “a place of death and despair,” stating in a press release issued Friday that the death toll has reached the tens of thousands, medical facilities are under attack and functioning hospitals are lacking.
“Hope has never been more elusive,” Griffiths wrote in the report, published by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs almost three months since Hamas launched its attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Griffiths said a public health disaster is unfolding as sewers overflow and infectious diseases spread in overcrowded shelters. Around 180 Palestinian women “are giving birth daily in the midst of this chaos,” the UN official added.
“Gaza has simply become uninhabitable. Its people witness daily threats to their very existence, while the world watches,” Griffiths said.
“Meanwhile, rocket attacks on Israel continue, more than 120 people are still held hostage in Gaza, tensions in the West Bank are boiling and the specter of further regional expansion of the war looms dangerously close,” he added. .
Fears of a broader war in the Middle East, spurred by incidents involving Iranian-backed groups such as the Houthi rebels in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, are a key focus of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s current trip to the region.
Griffiths urged all those involved in the ongoing war to respect international law, “including protecting civilians and providing for their essential needs, and releasing all hostages immediately.” He called on the international community to use all its influence to help make this happen.
“We continue to demand an immediate end to the war, not only for the people of Gaza and their threatened neighbors, but for future generations who will never forget these 90 days of hell and attacks on the most basic precepts of humanity,” he added.
“This war should never have started. But it is time for it to end,” Griffiths said.
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