'Unbearable' Gaza situation shocks UN

Spokesperson says UN chief appalled by harrowing levels of death, injury, destruction

CAIRO:

The United Nations said the plight of Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza was "unbearable" and the conflict was being "waged with little regard for the requirements of international humanitarian law". "The Secretary-General is shocked by the harrowing levels of death, injury and destruction in the north, with civilians trapped under rubble, the sick and wounded going without life-saving health care, and families lacking food and shelter, amid reports of families being separated and many people detained," UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.

Israeli authorities were hampering efforts to deliver food, medicine and other essential humanitarian supplies, putting lives at risk, he said. The devastation and deprivation resulting from Israeli military operations in the north were making life there untenable.

Israeli military strikes killed at least 45 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Sunday, most of them in the north of the enclave, Palestinian health officials said, as efforts to secure a ceasefire in the more than year-long war resumed in Qatar.

The talks aim to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a halt in fighting for less than a month in the hope it would lead to a more permanent ceasefire. There was no immediate comment from Hamas but a Palestinian official close to the mediation effort told Reuters: "I expect Hamas would listen to the new offers, but it remains determined that any agreement must end the war and get Israeli forces out of Gaza."

The death toll from Israel's military campaign in Gaza is approaching 43,000, Gaza health officials say, with the densely populated enclave in ruins.

Earlier on Sunday, 20 people were killed following an airstrike on houses in Jabalia, the largest of the Gaza Strip's eight historic refugee camps, which has been the focus of an Israeli military offensive for more than three weeks, medics and the Palestinian official news agency WAFA said.

An Israeli airstrike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinian families in Shati camp in Gaza City, killed nine people and wounded 20 others, with many in critical condition, medics said.

Footage circulated on Palestinian media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed people rushing to the bomb site to help evacuate the casualties. Bodies were scattered on the ground, while some carried wounded children in their arms before loading them in a vehicle. Three local journalists were among those killed at the school in Shati - Saed Radwan, head of digital media at Hamas Al-Aqsa television, Hanin Baroud, and Hamza Abu Selmeya, according to Hamas media. The Hamas-run Gaza government media office described their deaths as an "assassination." This raised the number of Palestinian journalists killed by Israeli fire since Oct 7, 2023 to 180, it added.