Gaza crisis: Israel’s envoy to UN wants Antonio Guterres to quit, says he ‘expresses an understanding for terrorism and murder'
- 25 Oct 2023
The main UN aid agency in besieged Gaza warned it will have to stop operations by the end of Wednesday because it is running out of fuel, as Hamas said overnight Israeli strikes killed at least 80 people.
Alarm has grown about the spiralling humanitarian crisis in heavily bombarded Gaza where one doctor said he was forced to perform emergency surgery on the wounded without an anaesthetic.
Israel has cut off impoverished Gaza's usual water, food and other supplies, and fewer than 70 relief trucks have entered since the war started – "a drop of aid in an ocean of need", warned UN chief Antonio Guterres.
Tempers flared at the United Nations where Guterres decried the "epic suffering" in Gaza and the "collective punishment" of its 2.4 million residents, drawing a furious response from Israel.
"Mr Secretary-General, in what world do you live?" replied an infuriated Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, who recounted graphic accounts of civilians including young children killed in the deadliest single attack in Israeli history.
Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, called on Guterres to resign, writing on X, formerly Twitter, that the UN chief had "expressed an understanding for terrorism and murder".
Antonio Guterres
US President Joe Biden – who has strongly backed Israel's war after what he called the "barbaric" Hamas attacks, but also brokered the entry of relief trucks via Egypt – shared the concern that the aid lifeline is "not fast enough".
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said "food, water, medicine and other essential humanitarian assistance must be able to flow into Gaza" and that "humanitarian pauses must be considered for these purposes".
Inside the battered Palestinian territory, Abu Ali Zaarab, whose family house in Rafah was bombed, charged angrily that "they're not waging war on Hamas, they're waging war on children... It's a massacre."
Agence France-Presse
