UN Urges Large-Scale Humanitarian Aid Delivery To Gaza Strip

United Nations (UN) spokesman Stephane Dujarric stressed this week, urging the need to allow humanitarian workers to deliver large-scale life-saving aid across the Gaza Strip.

In a daily press conference at the head office in Geneva, Switzerland he said it was important to avoid death from hunger as the death toll from it continued to grow in the Palestinian enclave.

"To avoid deaths from Israeli hunger, humanitarian workers must be able to deliver food on a large and sustainable scale through all available intersections and roads to reach the 2.1 million population of the Gaza Strip, half of which are children," he said.

"We are concerned by the announcement of the Israeli authorities regarding the expansion of their imminent military activities in Gaza City," he added, following Israel's plans to control the country's militaryly approved Gaza City.

Dujarric stressed that the expansion of operations to occupy the entire city of Gaza "will cause thousands of people to flee back to densely populated areas in the southern Gaza Strip, which even lacks the most basic infrastructure and services, including food, water, and medical services."

As previously reported, Amnesty International in its report compiled for the United Nations and non-governmental organizations, the Gaza Strip, Palestine is on the verge of an imminent famine.

After interviewing 19 displaced Palestinians and two medical personnel caring for malnourished children, the organization stated, "Israel is carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation in the occupied Gaza Strip, systematically destroying the health, safety, and social order of Palestinian life."

The organization explained that the testimony it collected confirmed, "the deliberate results of the plans and policies designed and implemented by Israel over the past 22 months intentionally imposed life conditions on Palestinians in Gaza which are expected to cause their physical destruction, and are part of the ongoing genocide carried out by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza."

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the United Nations Human Rights Office said Israel allowed a number of supplies into the Gaza Strip, but the amount was not enough to prevent widespread hunger.

"In recent weeks, Israeli authorities have only allowed aid to come in in large quantities below the amount needed to prevent widespread hunger," UN Human Rights Office spokesman Thameen Al Kheetan said at a news conference in Geneva.

He added that the risk of starvation in Gaza was "a direct result of the Israeli government's policy to block humanitarian aid".

Meanwhile, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Region (COGAT), the military agency and Israel's Ministry of Defense in charge of coordinating aid deliveries to Gaza said Israel had invested "large enough effort" in the distribution of aid.

As of Tuesday, the total death toll from hunger and malnutrition in the Palestinian enclave had reached 263, including 112 children.