The United Nations says Israel continues to restrict aid entering Gaza.
Geneva:
The United Nations warned on Tuesday that Israel’s severe restrictions on aid to war-torn Gaza and continued attacks could be seen as using hunger as a “weapon of war”.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk has condemned rampant hunger and looming famine in Gaza.
“The situation of hunger and famine is the result of Israel’s widespread restrictions on the entry and distribution of humanitarian aid and commercial supplies, the displacement of much of the population, and the destruction of critical civilian infrastructure,” he said in a statement.
“The extent to which Israel continues to restrict aid entering Gaza, and the manner in which it continues hostilities, may amount to using starvation as a means of warfare, which is a war crime.”
His spokesman Jeremy Lawrence told reporters in Geneva that the final decision “on whether hunger is being used as a weapon of war” will be decided by the courts.
“The suffering of the people of Gaza is unjustifiable,” he said.
The comments came after a United Nations-backed assessment determined that the war-torn Palestinian territory is facing looming famine.
A U.N.-backed food security assessment warns that about half of Gazans, or about 1.1 million people, have suffered “catastrophic” hunger since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 as a result of the devastating war.
Gaza’s war-torn north could see 300,000 people go hungry by May without massive aid, the government said on Monday.
Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the U.N. humanitarian agency OCHA, told reporters in Geneva that the agency fears “more than 200 people will die from hunger every day” if no action is taken.
Turk also stressed that “time is running out.”
“Everyone, especially those with influence, must insist that Israel take action to facilitate the unhindered access and distribution of needed humanitarian aid and commercial supplies to end hunger and avoid all risks of famine.”
He lamented that “the alarm bells sounded by the United Nations, including my office, over the past few months have not been heeded.”
“This disaster is man-made and completely avoidable.”
According to an AFP tally of official Israeli data, Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on October 7 that killed about 1,160 people in Israel, most of them civilians, and the war in Gaza broke out.
The militants also held about 250 hostages, of whom Israel believes 130 remain in Gaza and 33 of them are presumed dead.
Israel has responded with a relentless offensive against Hamas, which Gaza’s health ministry says has killed more than 31,800 people, mostly women and children.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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