Geneva, Switzerland — The World Health Organization decried Thursday the horrifying situation unfolding in Gaza, with one top official voicing anger that the world was allowing the “abomination” to continue.
“We have to ask ourselves: How much blood is enough to satisfy whatever the political objectives are,” the UN health agency’s emergencies director Mike Ryan told reporters in Geneva.
“We are breaking the bodies and the minds of the children of Gaza. We are starving the children of Gaza, because if we don’t do something about it we are complicit in what is happening.”
Israel strictly controls all inflows of international aid vital for the 2.4 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
It halted aid deliveries to Gaza on March 2, days before the collapse of a ceasefire that had significantly reduced hostilities after 15 months of war.
Since the start of the blockade, the UN has repeatedly warned of the humanitarian catastrophe on the ground, with famine again looming.
Supplies are dwindling and the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) last Friday said it had sent out its “last remaining food stocks” to kitchens.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Thursday that at least 2,326 people have been killed since Israel resumed strikes, bringing the overall death toll since the war broke out to 52,418.
The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Militants also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still being held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Ryan pointed to the more than 1,000 children in Gaza that are missing limbs, “thousands of children with spinal cord injuries, with severe head injuries from which they’ll never recover” and psychological conditions.
“We are watching this unfold before our very eyes, and we’re not doing anything about it.”
Addressing the other WHO experts and journalists gathered at the agency’s Geneva headquarters, Ryan said “I’m angry”.
“As a physician, I’m angry with myself that I’m not doing enough. I’m angry with everyone here.”
“This cannot continue… This is an abomination.”
