Gaza is plunging deeper into a hunger crisis, 50 days after Israel imposed a total blockade preventing all aid from entering the devastated enclave, the U.N. warned Tuesday.
"Gaza has become a land of desperation," Philippe Lazzarini, head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said on X.
"Hunger is spreading and deepening, deliberate and manmade."
After 18 months of Israel's genocidal war and an aid blockade since March 2, the U.N. has warned of a dire humanitarian situation for the 2.4 million inhabitants of the Palestinian territory.
Israel has accused the Palestinian resistance group Hamas of diverting aid, which it denies.
The heads of 12 major aid organizations warned last Thursday that "famine is not just a risk, but likely rapidly unfolding in almost all parts" of the territory.
"You can see a clear tendency toward total disaster," Jens Laerke, spokesman for the U.N. humanitarian agency OCHA told reporters in Geneva Tuesday.
"It is true that right now is probably the worst humanitarian situation we have seen throughout the war in Gaza."
In his post on X, Lazzarini questioned "how much longer until hollow words of condemnation will translate into action to lift the siege, resume a cease-fire and save whatever is left of humanity?"
The UNRWA chief decried that 2 million people in Gaza, most of them women and children, "are undergoing collective punishment."
"The wounded, sick and elderly are deprived of medical supplies and care," he said, even as humanitarian organizations like UNRWA have thousands of trucks waiting with supplies that risk expiring.
"Humanitarian aid is being used as a bargaining chip and a weapon of war," he charged.
"The siege must be lifted, supplies must flow in, the hostages must be released, the ceasefire must resume."
