DOHA May 19. 2024 (Saba) - The United Nations humanitarian coordinator, Martin Griffiths, has warned that cracking down on aid reaching Gaza could portend "horrific" consequences and famine in the besieged enclave.
Griffiths said in an interview with AFP in the Qatari capital Doha on Sunday that "if fuel runs out, and aid does not reach the people who need it, that famine that we have talked about for so long and that is looming, will no longer be on the horizon, it will be there."
"I think what worries us as citizens of the international community is that the consequences will be very difficult, difficult and horrible," the UN relief chief said on the sidelines of his meetings with Qatari officials.
Aid organizations say the incursion into Rafah has exacerbated the acute humanitarian crisis.
Griffiths said about 50 aid trucks could reach the worst-affected areas of northern Gaza every day through the Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing, but what is happening at the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings in southern Gaza means vital roads are "effectively closed."
"Therefore, the aid that arrives by land routes to the south and to Rafah and the displaced from it is almost non-existent," the UN official added.
The commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, confirmed yesterday that 800,000 people have been "forced to flee" Rafah in the far south of the Gaza Strip since the start of Israeli military operations in the city this month.
With fuel, food and medicine running out, Griffiths said the military action in Rafah was "exactly what we feared it would be."
"We have all said very clearly that the Rafah operation is a disaster in humanitarian terms, a catastrophe for people who have already been displaced to Rafah, and this is now their fourth or fifth displacement." He said.
E.M
resource : Saba
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