Nearly 10,000 women have been killed in Gaza since war erupted six months ago and one child is injured or dies every 10 minutes, UN agencies warned on Tuesday, amid spiralling violence in the West Bank and concerns over a regional escalation of the conflict following Iran’s missile and drone strike on Israel.
As UN chief António Guterres on Monday reiterated his appeal for “maximum restraint” in the Middle East following Iran’s drone and missile attack on Israel, independent human rights experts said that the alleged use of artificial intelligence on targets in Gaza by the Israeli military had taken an “unprecedented toll” on civilians, housing and services.
The people of the Middle East are facing a real danger of a devastating full-scale conflict, António Guterres said on Sunday, urging “maximum restraint” across a region on the brink hours after Iran launched attack drones and missiles against Israel overnight Saturday.
Strongly condemning the “large-scale attack” launched on Israel by Iran, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has urged maximum restraint by all parties and warned that “neither the region nor the world can afford another war.”
The situation for Gazans remains dire despite hopes stemming from recent commitments by Israel to boost assistance, the UN’s top aid official in the Occupied Palestinian Territory said on Friday.
People in Gaza are struggling to survive, said the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, who was part of a team carrying out an assessment mission on Wednesday in the southern city of Khan Younis following the Israeli military withdrawal last week.
UN-coordinated food convoys are three times more likely to be denied access to north Gaza than other aid convoys, the UN humanitarian affairs office, OCHA, reported on Tuesday.
The President of the UN General Assembly appealed on Monday for “all those with leverage” to use their power to bring an end to the six-month-long war in Gaza.
The Security Council prepared to convene on Monday to consider a Palestinian request for United Nations membership as humanitarians expressed deep concerns about Israel’s planned invasion of Rafah and the desperate lack of aid reaching Gaza.
The UN’s overriding mission in Gaza to ‘flood the place with food’ and avert famine has moved forward this week thanks to Israel’s public pledge to increase the flow of aid, despite signs on Sunday that the feared invasion of Rafah is imminent.
