UN chief decries "non-stop nightmare" in Gaza as Israel gets hit with more aid killing claims
Rafah, Gaza – UN chief António Guterres, on a visit to the doorstep of Gaza, on Saturday said the world has seen enough of the war's horrors and appealed for a ceasefire to allow in more aid. Meanwhile, claims of more Gazan civilians being killed by Israel while waiting at an aid point have surfaced.
"Palestinians in Gaza – children, women, men – remain stuck in a non-stop nightmare," he said on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing where truckloads of aid trickle into Gaza, but the population is stalked by "hunger and starvation."
"I carry the voices of the vast majority of the world who have seen enough," Guterres said, deploring "communities obliterated, homes demolished, entire families and generations wiped out".
He reiterated that "nothing justifies the horrific attacks by Hamas" against Israel, which triggered the war on October 7, "and nothing justifies the collective punishment of the Palestinian people," the United Nations secretary-general said.
Guterres, speaking at a lectern in front of the imposing gates to the Gaza side of Rafah, through which aid trucks pass, said the "heartbreak and heartlessness of it all" were clear.
"A long line of blocked relief trucks on one side of the gates. The long shadow of starvation on the other," which he called "a moral outrage."
Guterres emphasised "it is more than time for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire" and appealed to Israel for "total, unfettered access for humanitarian goods throughout Gaza."
The UN chief, who makes an annual "solidarity mission" to distressed Muslim communities during their holy fasting month, said that "in the Ramadan spirit of compassion, it is also time for the immediate release of all hostages" captured in the October attacks and still held by militants in Gaza.
A vote at the UN Security Council on a new text calling for an "immediate" ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war was postponed to Monday, diplomatic sources told AFP, after a separate, US-lead draft resolution was vetoed for stopping short of explicitly demanding Israel immediately end its campaign in Gaza.
Were more civilians killed while waiting for aid in Gaza?
Meanwhile, the government in Gaza claimed Israeli fire killed 19 people as they were waiting at an aid distribution point on Saturday, a charge Israel denied.
The deaths if confirmed would be the latest in a series of cases of Gazan civilians being killed while seeking desperately needed relief supplies.
The Hamas government media office said 19 people were killed and 23 wounded. The health ministry said "they were waiting for aid trucks at the Kuwait roundabout" when they were hit by "Israeli occupation army tank fire and shells".
The Israeli army denied it had fired on the crowd.
Half of Gazans are experiencing "catastrophic" hunger, with famine projected to hit the north of the territory by May unless there is urgent intervention, a United Nations-backed food assessment warned Monday.
Cover photo: SAID KHATIB / AFP