UN Under Secretary-General for UN Humanitarian Assistance, Tom Fletcher, said on Tuesday that 14,000 babies may die in the next 48 hours in the Gaza Strip, if humanitarian aid loads do not quickly reach the civilian population of. The United Nations Authority Declaration takes place at a time when, even trucks with basic inputs that have already reached the Gaza border control post have not yet been able to bring help to the final recipients.
“Let me describe what you have in these trucks: it’s baby food.” Nutrition for babies. There are 14,000 babies who will die in the next 48 hours if we can’t reach them. This is not food that Hamas will steal – said Fletcher in an interview with Radio 4 of BBC. – I want to save as much of these 14,000 babies as possible in the next 48 hours.
The bleak scenario described by Fletcher occurs after more than two months of total blockade imposed by Israel to sending humanitarian aid to the enclave. The Israeli Armed Forces made a total siege of the end of March 2, when the ceasefire agreement negotiated earlier this year to exchange hostages for prisoners collapsed. Since then, international organizations that work in the region draw attention to the risk of shortage of water, food, fuel and medicines.
The total blockade was broken on Monday when the government. The UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs reported on Tuesday, however, that only five effectively entered the enclave for “logistical issues.” A new authorization was granted by the Israeli military on Tuesday to about 100 trucks, according to the same source.
“We hope, of course, with this approval, that many of them, I hope they all come to a point where they can be collected and taken into the Gaza Strip for distribution,” said spokesman Jens Laerke during a press conference.
Asked about the number of 14,000 deaths at risk of death, quoted by Fletcher, the spokesman said he just knew “surely there are babies who urgently need these supplements to save their lives, and need to be supplied because their mothers cannot feed them alone,” however, has not confirmed the exact number mentioned by the boss.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu justified on Monday that the government’s authorization to end total block was motivated by “practical and diplomatic reasons,” stating that “friends” of Israel would not admit to seeing mass hunger scenes in Gaza. In the same video announcement, Premier stated that military operations would be maintained and that it would take control of the territory – the army had already said the day before that the attacks would be intensified.
Gaza emergency teams, linked to Hamas Administration, announced on Tuesday that at least 44 people have died in Israeli bombings since dawn. Palestinian Civil Defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal said most of these deceased, registered by hospitals at Enclave, were children and women.
Eight of the victims were in a school, which has been serving as shelter for people displaced in the city of Gaza. Another 15 died in a bombing against a gas station in the Nusastor refugee camp and nine in a building in the Jabaliya Campo.
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In a statement issued by the Israeli army on Tuesday, Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir condemned “any statement that throws doubts about the ethics of the IDF operations and the morality of their combatants.”
“The FDI and their combatants operate against our enemies, by loyalty to the values of the FDI, the law and to international law, while imprisonment protecting the security of the State of Israel and its citizens,” the statement says. “IDF combatants are working and will continue to work, day and night, on all fronts, with determination and morality, as they always did.”
Although the statement has not addressed any specific recipients, the text was published after Israel’s Democratic Party President Yair Golan declare in an interview with the country’s public radio that “a country is not killing babies per hobby.”
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“Israel is on its way to becoming a uriaes between nations, such as the former South Africa, if you don’t behave again like a country,” said the leader of the leftist acronym. – A country is not wide war against civilians, does not kill babies by hobby and does not set goals involving the expulsion of populations.
The comments of Golan, a former Armed Forces Major General, were widely condemned by the entire Israeli political spectrum. Premier Netanyahu accused him of “wild incitement” against Israeli troops and “echoing the most despicable anti -Semitic libels against the state of Israel.” Opposition leader Yair Lapid wrote in a comment on social network X that the statement that Israeli soldiers, called by “heroes,” “kill children as a hobby is incorrect and a gift to our enemies.”
Education Minister Yoav Kisch of the Netanyahu party called for an investigation for incitement against Golan, who has no parliamentary immunity for not being a Knesset member.
