Humanitarian system in Gaza on verge of collapse, says UN chief

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The UN secretary-general warned that the war between Israel and Hamas had brought the humanitarian system in Gaza to the verge of collapse, and risked “aggravating” threats to “international peace and security”.

Using a rarely invoked article in the UN charter to flag his concerns to the security council on Wednesday, António Guterres flagged that more than eight weeks into the war there was “no effective protection of civilians” in Gaza, and that the conflict had turned hospitals in the enclave into “battlegrounds”.

“We are facing a severe risk of collapse of the humanitarian system. The situation is fast deteriorating into a catastrophe with potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians as a whole and for peace and security in the region,” he wrote in a letter to the security council. “Such an outcome must be avoided at all cost.”

Israel declared war on Hamas after militants from the Palestinian group stormed into Israel on October 7, killing around 1,200 people according to Israeli officials, and taking another 240 hostages in the deadliest attack on Israeli soil.

Guterres repeated his condemnation of Hamas’s attack, called for a humanitarian ceasefire and the immediate and unconditional release of the remaining hostages. He described accounts of sexual violence by Hamas militants during the attacks as “appalling”.

But he also warned that Israel’s retaliatory bombardment had taken a devastating toll on civilians. According to health officials in Gaza, more than 16,200 people have been killed, more than 70 per cent of them women and children.

Guterres added that, in the face of the intense Israeli bombardment…