UN chief denounces ‘clear violations’ of international law in Gaza
24 October 2023
The Financial Times Newspaper reports that the UN chief António Guterres has condemned “clear violations of international law” in Gaza as the US added to mounting pressure on the Israeli government to pause its bombardment of the besieged coastal enclave and allow in more aid.
In his toughest remarks so far about the conduct of the war in the Gaza Strip, Guterres told the UN security council on Tuesday that the safety of civilians was paramount.
“Protecting civilians can never mean using them as human shields,” the secretary-general said, adding that it “does not mean ordering more than 1mn people to evacuate to the south, where there is no shelter, no food, no water, no medicine and no fuel, and then continuing to bomb the south itself”.
Guterres also said that the deadly assault by Palestinian militant group Hamas on southern Israel on October 7 “did not happen in a vacuum”.
“The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation,” he added, though he said their grievances could not justify the “appalling attacks”.
UN officials have warned that a catastrophic humanitarian disaster is unfolding in Gaza as Israel bombards the enclave and cuts off its supplies of water, fuel and power.
Only four small consignments of aid have crossed the border into Gaza from Egypt since Israeli forces imposed a siege of the strip. The latest, involving eight trucks carrying water, food and medicines, arrived in Gaza on Tuesday evening, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.
Israel is blocking the entry of aid at the scale necessary for alleviating Gaza’s humanitarian crisis until a mechanism for inspections can be put into place that guarantees that no weapons or fuel enter the enclave from Egypt, said three senior UN officials.
Palestinian officials said a further 700 people had been killed in Gaza in the last 24 hours — the highest daily death toll since the war began.
At least 5,791 people have been killed in Gaza, Palestinian health authorities said, since Israel started its bombardment of the strip in retaliation for the Hamas attack that killed at least 1,400 civilians and soldiers, according to Israeli authorities.
The Israeli military has stepped up its air strikes in Gaza in recent days, hitting an additional 400 targets overnight which it described as staging grounds for rocket attacks and a tunnel that led to the Mediterranean Sea.
#CeasefireNOW
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