On Monday, Britain and over 20 other countries called for an immediate end to the war in Gaza, voicing criticism of the Israeli government’s approach to delivering aid after hundreds of Palestinians were killed near food distribution sites.
France, Italy, Japan, Australia, Canada, Denmark and other countries said more than 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid and condemned what it called the “drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians”.
The majority of those killed were in the vicinity of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) sites, which the United States and Israel backed to take over aid distribution in Gaza from a network led by the United Nations.
“The Israeli government’s aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity,” the countries’ foreign ministers said in a joint statement.
‘Mass Deaths’ From Hunger
Gaza health officials have warned of potential “mass deaths” in coming days from hunger, which has killed at least 19 people since Saturday, the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry said.
The call for an end to the war in Gaza and the way Israel delivers aid comes from several countries which are allied with Israel and its most important backer, the United States.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation uses private U.S. security and logistics companies to get supplies into Gaza, largely bypassing a U.N.-led system that Israel alleges has let Hamas-led terrorists loot aid shipments intended for civilians. Hamas denies the accusation.
The U.N. has called the GHF’s model unsafe and a breach of humanitarian impartiality standards, which GHF denies.
UNRWA, the U.N. refugee agency dedicated to Palestinians, said on X it was receiving desperate messages from Gaza warning of starvation, including from its own staff, as food prices have soared.
“Meanwhile, just outside Gaza, stockpiled in warehouses UNRWA has enough food for the entire population for over three months. Lift the siege and let aid in safely and at scale,” it said.
(With inputs from Reuters)
