UN chief calls Gaza situation 'horrific'

United Nations, July 15 (IANS) UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the situation in Gaza as "horrific."

"What we are witnessing in Gaza is a level of death and destruction that has no parallel in recent times," he told reporters.

There were reports of more civilian casualties over the weekend, including children, during attacks that felled people seeking aid, Xinhua news agency reported.

Guterres said the violence undermines the most basic conditions of human dignity for the population of Gaza, "independently of the enormous suffering that they are having."

The UN chief reiterated his plea for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

"I hope that the parties are able to overcome ... the difficulties that they still find for that ceasefire to take place," he said. "But the ceasefire is not enough. It is essential that that ceasefire leads to a solution, and that solution can only be possible if both Palestinians and Israelis can have a state where they can exercise their rights."

The secretary-general said the condition of Palestinians living "in their own lands, without any rights is something that is totally against humanity and totally against international law."

UN humanitarians have called recent attacks in Gaza, where women and children were killed while seeking water and food, an "outrage."

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that over the weekend, strikes and shelling intensified across Gaza, resulting in mass casualties.

OCHA said seven children reportedly were killed while waiting for water at a distribution site in Nuseirat. The latest incident followed one on Thursday, when several children and women were killed while waiting for nutrition supplies.

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) called such slayings an outrage that must end, and said civilians must be protected and treated with dignity, adding that no one, including children, should risk their lives to get food, water or any other aid.

OCHA said the health system caring for casualties from the hostilities has been decimated, and that despite being on the brink of collapse, hospitals continue to respond to mass casualty incidents as much as they can.

The humanitarian office said health teams in Gaza continue to suffer some of the worst impacts of hostilities. The Ministry of Health in Gaza reported that a specialist in surgery and endoscopy was killed over the weekend.

UN agencies warned that the fuel shortage in Gaza has reached critical levels and that without adequate fuel, they will likely be forced to stop their operations entirely, directly impacting all essential services in Gaza, putting more people closer to death, with no health services, no clean water and no capacity to deliver aid.

OCHA said the small quantities of fuel allowed to enter Gaza last week were barely enough to support essential service operations for even a single day.

UN agencies and partners repeated that fuel must be allowed into Gaza in sufficient quantities and consistently to sustain life-saving operations.

UNICEF also reminded that the risk of famine remains. More than 5,800 children were diagnosed with malnutrition last month in Gaza, including more than 1,000 children with severe acute malnutrition, an increase for the fourth month in a row.

OCHA said the small quantities of aid and critical supplies that have entered Gaza so far are nowhere near enough to meet the needs of 2.1 million people. The Israeli authorities must permit the urgent entry of large-scale aid through all possible routes and corridors.

The humanitarian office said Israeli authorities have continued to issue displacement orders amid the violence. On Friday, they put out an evacuation order for the Rimal area of Gaza City, where about 70,000 people were staying at a dozen displacement sites. More than 86 per cent of Gaza is either under displacement orders or located within Israeli-militarized zones.

In the West Bank, OCHA said high levels of violence continue.

On Friday, two Palestinian men in their early 20s were killed near Ramallah during a settler attack, the office said.

According to OCHA, in the first half of 2025, more than 700 attacks by settlers against Palestinians were recorded, affecting more than 200 communities across the West Bank, primarily in Ramallah, Nablus and Hebron governorates, and resulting in casualties and property damage.

--IANS

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