Plight of Palestinians in northern Gaza “unbearable”: UN chief

The plight of Palestinian civilians trapped in North Gaza is unbearable, Guterres’s spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said.

Israel, vowing to stop Hamas fighters from regrouping in the north of the Palestinian territory, has launched a major air and ground assault on October 6 and ordered residents to flee South, while no food or clear water arriving in the region.

The UN spokesperson stated that according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, hundreds of people have been killed in recent weeks and tens of thousands were forced to flee.

The Secretary-General is shocked by the harrowing levels of death, injury and destruction in the north, with civilians trapped under rubble, the sick and wounded going without life-saving health care, and families lacking food and shelter”, Dujarric added.

Israeli authorities are continuing to deny attempts to deliver humanitarian aid to those in need, Dujarric stressed, “with few exceptions, putting countless lives in peril”.

European Union foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell has also issued a statement underscoring what he called “the urgent need to respect” international humanitarian law in the besieged enclave

“By signing the Geneva Conventions, signatories have a legal responsibility to ensure adherence to international law by all parties involved. It is our duty to protect civilians and human rights, and it is high time to act on it,” he said.

“The too little information coming out from North Gaza still attests to a catastrophic level of killing, destruction and starvation, in addition to forced displacements of civilians while an entire population is under bombings, siege and risk of starvation, as well as being forced to choose between displacement or death,” he added.

The Israeli army has intensified its assault in northern Gaza amid a suffocating siege that has left tens of thousands of people without food and water.

The aggression, which began in early October, is the latest episode in Israel’s brutal offensive that has killed nearly 43,000 people, mostly women and children, and injured more than 100,000 since last October following an attack by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas.

The Israeli onslaught has displaced nearly the entire population of the territory amid an ongoing blockade that has led to severe shortages of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its actions in Gaza.