Humanitarian aid
UN Secretary General urges aid for Gaza Strip
Tents provided by UNDP in Khan Younis. photo
© Ashraf Amra/AP
Human rights activists warn about the situation for the people in the Gaza Strip – there is a lack of food, water, medicine and fuel. UN Secretary General Guterres also speaks out again.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has emphatically called for aid supplies for the people in Israel’s lockdown Gaza Strip demanded. “We need quick, unhindered access for humanitarian aid. We need food, water, medicine and fuel immediately,” wrote Guterres that night on the platform X (formerly Twitter). “We need this aid on a large scale and it must be sustainable,” he wrote. The UN Secretary General is in Egypt to talk to the government about opening the Rafah border crossing into the Gaza Strip.
Rafah, on the southern edge of the coastal enclave, is seen as the only way to bring urgently needed aid to the Gaza Strip. Israel had agreed to open the border crossing for the delivery of water, food and medicine. However, there was no mention of fuel, necessary to generate electricity and on which Gaza’s overcrowded hospitals desperately rely. Yesterday, around 165 trucks carrying humanitarian supplies were piled up in front of the crossing on the Egyptian side.
According to Egyptian sources, access roads in the Gaza Strip that had been damaged by air strikes had to be repaired first. It remains uncertain exactly when the hoped-for opening of Rafah will take place.