UN humanitarian chief paints a grim Gaza picture
This meeting at the United Nations was convened by several UN Security Council members, including the United Kingdom, France, Greece, Slovenia, and Denmark, who are seeking increased access for aid to enter Gaza – given the current situation there.
UN aid chief Tom Fletcher said “it’s hard to come up with the words to describe” what UN staff are seeing in Gaza.
In just the last month, some 5,800 women and children have been treated for malnourishment, 70 percent of essential medicines are missing in the Gaza Strip, and the UN has also reported that people are sleeping outside without any shelters or protection because they’ve been displaced so many times.
This was essentially a call for help from Fletcher, who also explained that, despite its presence on the ground in Gaza, the UN is still unable to meet the vast needs of the people there.
Large crowds gather in Gaza for a rare meal
War on Gaza ‘a complete human tragedy’, says Swedish doctor
Marit Halmin, a Swedish doctor currently in Gaza, says she met fathers who are going to deadly aid distribution sites despite being scared for their lives and aware of the likelihood of being shot.
She also described having to put dead children and their mothers into body bags.
“This is a complete human tragedy that the world is witnessing and allows to happen,” Halmin told told Sweden’s national broadcaster SVT.
UNICEF says the world has failed Gaza’s children
More than 17,000 children have reportedly been killed and 33,000 wounded in the ongoing war in Gaza, UNICEF’s executive director, Catherine Russell, says.
She told the UN Security Council an average of 28 kids die daily in Gaza – “a whole classroom of children killed every day for nearly two years”.
Malnutrition has surged with nearly 6,000 children acutely malnourished in June, a 180 percent increase since February, she said.
Food supplies are running out, and Gaza civilians are being shot while seeking something to eat, UN Under-Secretary-General Tom Fletcher said.
“Civilians are exposed to death and injury, forcible displacement, stripped of dignity,” Fletcher told the Security Council, emphasising Israel’s obligation under the Geneva Conventions to provide food and medical aid as the occupying power in Gaza.
