People in Gaza are facing the “worst food insecurity ever,” UN aid chief says
According to Martin Griffiths, the United Nations' top emergency relief official, famine is “imminent” as Gazans face “the highest levels of food insecurity ever.”
(Source: Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images)
Griffiths said Gaza had become “a place of death and despair,” saying in a news release issued Friday that the death toll had reached tens of thousands, medical facilities were under attack and there was a lack of functioning hospitals.
“Hope has never been more elusive,” Griffiths wrote in the report, released by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs nearly three months after Hamas began its attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Griffiths said a public health disaster was looming as sewers overflowed and infectious diseases spread in crowded shelters. About 180 Palestinian women are giving birth “daily amidst this chaos,” the U.N. official added.
“Gaza has simply become uninhabitable. Its people witness daily threats to their existence while the world watches,” Griffiths said.
“Meanwhile, rocket attacks on Israel continue, more than 120 people are still held hostage in Gaza, tensions are running high in the West Bank and the specter of further regional expansion of the war is looming dangerously close,” he added.
Fears of a larger war in the Middle East, fueled by incidents involving Iranian-backed groups such as the Houthi rebels in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, are at the heart of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken's current trip to the region.
Griffiths called on all those involved in the ongoing war to respect international law, “including protecting civilians, providing for their basic needs and the immediate release of all hostages.” He called on the international community to use all its influence to contribute.
“We continue to call for an immediate end to the war, not only for the people of Gaza and their threatened neighbors, but also for future generations who will never forget these 90 days of hell and attacks on the most fundamental tenets of humanity,” he added .
“This war should never have started. But it’s time for it to end,” Griffiths said.