Red Cross says Gaza bloodshed ‘must end now – immediately and decisively’
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has released a statement calling for an immediate end to the “abhorrent suffering” in Gaza.
“There is no excuse for what is happening in Gaza,” said ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric. “The scale of human suffering and the stripping of human dignity have long exceeded every acceptable standard – both legal and moral.”
“People are being relentlessly killed in hostilities and while attempting to get food,” said Spoljaric. “Children are dying because they do not have enough to eat. Families are being forced to flee again and again in search of safety that does not exist.”
“This tragedy must end now – immediately and decisively,” she added. “Every political hesitation, every attempt at justification of the horrors being committed under international watch will forever be judged as a collective failure to preserve humanity in war.”
WFP calls for ‘massive’ scale-up in food aid in Gaza
“Only a massive scale-up in food aid can stabilize the hunger catastrophe engulfing Gaza,” the World Food Programme has said in a statement.
The UN agency said severe acute malnutrition is surging, and almost a third of families miss meals for days at a time. Humanitarian assistance is the only way for people to access food as market prices have skyrocketed, the WFP said.
“A huge humanitarian scale-up is also needed to calm anxieties and rebuild trust within communities that more food is coming,” it added.
According to UN data:
- The entire population of Gaza faces acute levels of food insecurity.
- 470,000 people are facing catastrophic hunger.
- 70,000 children need urgent treatment for acute malnutrition.
WFP: Food aid distributed in Gaza amounts to ‘tiny fraction’ of what’s needed
The UN’s World Food Programme says on X that it has distributed 22,000 metric tonnes of food aid to starving Palestinians in Gaza since May 21, and dispatched 349 trucks carrying about 4,200 tonnes of food in the last week alone.
“Despite these efforts, the quantity of food aid delivered to date is still a tiny fraction of what a population of over 2 million people need to survive”, it said in its post.
It called on Israel to show “commitment” to speeding up approval of the entry of aid convoys to the Gaza Strip.
As we’ve been reporting, Palestinians are dying from complications related to malnutrition, in effect starving to death, daily, with at least nine people passing in this manner today. Israel maintains a blockade on the Gaza Strip.
