“I deeply regret that military operations have started again in the Gaza Strip. I’m still hoping to be able to update the set break. The return of hostilities only shows how important it is that a genuine humanitarian ceasefire is reached,” the UN Secretary-General said on the X social network.
On Friday, the UN children’s agency condemned renewed fighting in the Gaza Strip, saying “those in power have decided that children will be killed again”.
“Doing nothing is essentially condoning the killing of children,” James Elder, spokesman for the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF, told reporters in Geneva by video link from Gaza, adding that “it is foolish to think that more attacks on the people of Gaza will lead to anything other than massacres”.
“The humanitarian situation in Gaza is so dire that anything short of lasting peace and large-scale emergency aid spells disaster for the children of Gaza,” he added.
According to Mr. Elder, the extremely poor health, nutrition, water and sanitation conditions in the enclave threaten that the children there may have to face a catastrophe of an unprecedented scale.
“It is very disturbing to hear how some manage to ignore the tragic deaths of these children; and now, today, they seem to feel comfortable when the horror — the attacks — starts again, he said. – Accepting the sacrifice of children in Gaza is a surrender of humanity. This is our last chance before we dive back into explaining why another preventable tragedy was not prevented.”
Mr. Elder said he visited the children at Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Yunis on Friday after the fighting resumed.
The representative of UNICEF said that during the ceasefire, traumatized and injured children gradually began to return to their childhood memories. But when the explosions started, he says, the fear instantly returned and his childhood receded.
United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk (Volker Tuerkas) also stated that the renewed hostilities in the Gaza Strip are a catastrophe, and the situation, according to him, has now crossed the line of crisis.
“The resumption of hostilities in Gaza is a disaster. I call on all countries and states affected to immediately redouble their efforts to secure a ceasefire on humanitarian and human rights grounds,” he said in a statement.
The fighting was stopped on November 24. They were originally supposed to last four days, but were later extended for several more days with the help of Qatar and another mediator, Egypt. Fighting resumed on Friday morning.
During the week-long truce, Hamas and other Gaza militants released more than 100 hostages, most of them Israelis, in exchange for the release of 240 Palestinians from Israeli prisons.
The ceasefire also brought more aid into the devastated Gaza Strip.
The truce halted fighting that began on October 7, when Hamas militants broke through the militarized Gaza border into Israel and killed 1,200, according to Israeli authorities, in a surprise attack that shocked the world. and kidnapped about 240 people.
In response, the Jewish state vowed to destroy Hamas and launched an air and ground military campaign in the Gaza Strip that, according to Hamas, killed more than 15,000 people. people, mostly civilians.
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2024-08-25 00:31:50
