Guterres, at UN, denounces Israel’s Gaza aid blockade

GENEVA — United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Tuesday criticized Israel’s renewed blockade of aid to the Gaza Strip as a violation of its obligations under international law and said it had opened “the floodgates of horror.”

“Gaza is a killing field, and civilians are in an endless death loop,” Guterres said in prepared remarks to journalists at U.N. headquarters in New York.

“More than an entire month has passed without a drop of aid into Gaza,” he said. “No food. No fuel. No medicine. No commercial supplies. As aid has dried up, the floodgates of horror have reopened.”

The Israeli government rejected Guterres’ criticisms.

“As always, you don’t let the facts get in the way when spreading slander against Israel,” the spokesperson for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Oren Marmorstein, said on social media. “There is no shortage of humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip — over 25,000 aid trucks have entered the Gaza Strip in the 42 days of the cease-fire. Hamas used this aid to rebuild its war machine. Yet, not a word in your statement about the imperative for Hamas to leave Gaza.”

As an occupying power in Gaza, Guterres said, Israel has “inescapable obligations” under the Geneva Conventions to ensure delivery of food and medicine and to maintain hospitals and public health services.

In just the first week after the ceasefire broke down, more than 1,000 children were reported killed or injured in Gaza, said the agency chiefs, including those responsible for food, children, health and humanitarian aid. It was the highest one-week death toll for children there of the past year, they said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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