Calls for a humanitarian corridor to allow aid into Gaza were intensifying today despite a warning from Israel that its siege will continue until the hostages captured by Hamas are freed.
The United Nations’ secretary general Antonio Guterres said rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access was needed to help stricken civilians inside Gaza suffering from the aerial bombardment, displacement from their homes, and shortages of food, power and clean water.
Aid agencies also backed the call along with Brazil’s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in his role as the current head of the UN Security Council. He said that Israeli hostages should be freed but also urged Israel to “stop bombing so Palestinian children and their mothers” can leave Gaza via Egypt.
Egypt was also reported to be working to achieve a six-hour truce to allow vital supplies to be taken into Gaza across the country’s Rafah border with the tiny Palestinian territory.
But despite warnings that the main hospital in Gaza has only four days of fuel left and risks turning into “a morgue” and increasing reports of life-threatening hardship among the civilian population, Israel today warned that its decision to shut off all supplies to Gaza, including power and food, would not be reversed until its hostages were freed.
“Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home,” said energy minister Israel Katz.
“Humanitarianism for humanitarianism. And no one will preach us morality.”
Israeli military spokesman Lt Col Richard Hecht added that nobody was being allowed in or out of Gaza and that anyone trying to “will be shot. Anyone. No one’s coming in, no one’s coming out.”
The rebuff from Israel came as reports told of sewage building up on some streets, families struggling to find clean water, and medical supplies to treat the sick and injured running short.
Fabrizio Carboni, the regional director of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said: “The human misery caused by this escalation is abhorrent, and I implore the sides to reduce the suffering of civilians.
“As Gaza loses power, hospitals lose power, putting newborns in incubators and elderly patients on oxygen at risk. Kidney dialysis stops, and X-rays can’t be taken.”
The United Nations has said that 338,000 people have been displaced from their homes in Gaza since Israel’s airstrikes began in retaliation for the murderous Hamas attack which is so far known to have claimed 1,200 lives. The death toll in Gaza has also reached 1,200 with thousands more injured. Women and children are among the dead on both sides.
