The head of the UN's humanitarian office, Tom Fletcher, has denounced Israel's plan to distribute aid to the Gaza Strip as a "cynical sideshow, a deliberate distraction, a fig leaf for further violence and displacement", Reuters reported, BTA reported.
He told the UN Security Council that no food, medicine, water or tents have entered the troubled Palestinian enclave for more than 10 weeks. "We can save hundreds of thousands of survivors. We have strict mechanisms in place to ensure that our aid reaches civilians and not Hamas, but Israel is denying us access, putting the goal of depopulating Gaza before civilian lives," Fletcher said.
"Israel is deliberately and callously imposing inhumane conditions on civilians in the occupied Palestinian territory," said Tom Fletcher in an uncompromising speech quoted by Agence France-Presse. It was aimed not only at Israel but also at the Security Council, the agency noted.
"From my own visits to what remains of Gaza's health system (before the ceasefire, ed.), I can tell you that death on this scale has a sound and a smell that does not leave you. As one nurse described it: "children screaming as burnt tissue peels away from their skin", he added.
"We have briefed this Council in detail about the enormous harm inflicted on the civilian population that we witness every day: death, injury, destruction, starvation, disease, torture, other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, widespread displacement", he added. "We have described the deliberate obstruction of humanitarian operations and the systematic destruction of Palestinian life and what remains of it in Gaza".
"For the dead and those whose voices are silenced, what more evidence do you need? Will you act decisively to prevent genocide and ensure compliance with international humanitarian law, or will you instead say "we did everything we could"?", the head of the humanitarian aid office asked.
"And for those who will not experience what we fear is coming, it will be no consolation to know that future generations will hold us, in this room, accountable," he added.
Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that "there is no way" Israel will end the war in Gaza until the "Hamas" group is destroyed, the Associated Press recalls.
Any ceasefire agreement reached would be temporary, Netanyahu added. If "Hamas" said he would release more hostages, "we will take them and then we will go in. But there is no way to stop the war", he stressed. "We can make a ceasefire for a certain period of time, but we will get to the end".
The World Health Organization said on Tuesday that according to the Gaza Health Ministry, 57 children have died from the effects of malnutrition since the blockade began on March 2. The WHO representative in the occupied Palestinian territories, Dr. Rick Peppercorn, said that if the situation continues, nearly 71,000 children under the age of five are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition in the next 11 months.
"This is one of the worst famines in the world", which is happening "in real time", he stressed.