The UN secretary-general warned that the war between Israel and Hamas had brought the humanitarian system in Gaza to the verge of collapse, and risked “aggravating” threats to “international peace and security”.
Using a rarely invoked article in the UN charter to flag his concerns to the security council on Wednesday, António Guterres flagged that more than eight weeks into the war there was “no effective protection of civilians” in Gaza, and that the conflict had turned hospitals into “battlegrounds”.
“We are facing a severe risk of collapse of the humanitarian system. The situation is fast deteriorating into a catastrophe with potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians as a whole and for peace and security in the region,” he wrote in a letter to the security council. “Such an outcome must be avoided at all cost.”