UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the way Israel is waging war on Gaza has created “massive obstacles” for the delivery of humanitarian aid to the war-torn territory where people are facing famine.
In a short post on social media in the hours following a UN Security Council resolution demanding that flows of humanitarian aid to Gaza increase, Guterres said the Israeli military was the obstacle to achieving that demand.
“An effective aid operation in Gaza requires security; staff who can work in safety; logistical capacity; and the resumption of commercial activity,” he said.
In an earlier post, Guterres noted that 136 UN personnel have been killed in Gaza in just 75 days, “something we have never seen in [UN] history”.
“Most of our staff have been forced from their homes,” he said.
Following the UN Security Council vote in New York on Friday, Guterres said: “I hope that today’s Security Council resolution may help improve the delivery of much-needed aid but a humanitarian ceasefire is the only way to begin to meet the desperate needs of people in Gaza and end their ongoing nightmare.”
Israeli forces have systematically attacked healthcare and medical facilities in Gaza, bombed shelters run by the UN for displaced people, and attacked and harassed ambulance crews and others involved in humanitarian relief in the Gaza Strip.
The emergency medical group Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF) said the UN Security Council resolution demanding increased humanitarian aid for war-torn Gaza was “watered-down” and fell “painfully short” of what is needed to address the crisis.
“This resolution has been watered down to the point that its impact on the lives of civilians in Gaza will be nearly meaningless,” MSF-USA executive director Avril Benoit said in a statement.
“The way Israel is prosecuting this war, with US support, is causing massive death and suffering among Palestinian civilians and is inconsistent with international norms and laws,” Benoit said.
“Anyone with a conscience agrees that a massive scale-up of the humanitarian response in Gaza must take place without delay,” she said.
“More and more member states recognise that a ceasefire is indispensable to addressing the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, yet the Council has yet again failed to call for one.”
Israeli missile and artillery attacks on residential homes killed dozens in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza and were described as the “carpeting bombing” of a civilian area.
The night-long attack prevented rescue workers and paramedics from reaching the devastated neighbourhood, and the bodies of the civilians killed had yet to be removed from their destroyed homes.
Al Jazeera’s reporting team were forced to dive for cover as Israeli forces continued to pound the residential area with artillery shells.