Head Of UN Aid Urges Israeli PM To Stop War And End Starvation In Gaza

Residents of the Gaza Strip are waiting for humanitarian assistance. (Source: WAFA)

JAKARTA - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must stop military operations in the Gaza Strip and allow humanitarian organizations to resume adequate food and aid deliveries, UN Deputy Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher said at a briefing in Geneva, Switzerland.

According to him, hunger in the Gaza Strip should have been "prevented" if humanitarian organizations were able to deliver aid to these Palestinian territories in sufficient quantities.

"My request, my petition, my demands to Prime Minister Netanyahu and anyone who can contact him: enough. Ceasefire. Open all crossings, north and south. Let's get food and other supplies without obstacles and on a large scale needed," the UN aid chief urged. , reported TASS August 22.

"This is starvation within a few hundred meters of food on fertile soil," said Fletcher.

Previously, Gaza Strip press services reported only about 2,000 humanitarian aid trucks had entered the area over the past three and a half weeks. This number is less than 15 percent of the supply needed by local residents.

According to the press service, at least 15,000 humanitarian aid transport vehicles are expected to arrive in Gaza over the past 25 days, but only 2,187 trucks have been allowed into the region.

Separately, global hunger monitors for the first time said hunger had hit the densely populated northern Gaza Strip, about 22 months after the outbreak of war in the enclave following Hamas' deadly invasion of Israel in October 2023.

The Integrated Food Safety Phase Classification System (IPC) in its report estimates that 514,000 people or nearly a quarter of Gaza's population will experience starvation. This number is expected to increase to_641,000 by the end of September.

About 280,000 of them are in the northern region which includes Gaza City's Gaza Governorship which according to IPC is being hit by hunger.

Starvation also occurred in Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis, the central and southern regions projected by IPC to be hit by starvation by the end of next month.

The IPC says hunger has been driven by fighting and aid blockades, and exacerbated by widespread evacuations and collapse of food production in Gaza, prompting hunger to a life-threatening level across the region after 22 months of war.

More than half a million people in Gaza, about a quarter of the population, face a very high level of hunger, and many are at risk of dying from causes related to malnutrition, the IPC report said.

Last month, the IPC said the "worst scenario of hunger" was taking place in Gaza, but had not yet issued an official decision.