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On Saturday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is scheduled to visit Egypt’s border with Gaza to reiterate calls for a truce that could provide much-needed respite to a region that has been devastated by over five months of fighting between Israel and Hamas.
His visit coincides with Israel’s vow, defied by international objections, to initiate a large-scale military assault in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, which is located directly across the border from Egypt.
Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants have taken refuge in and around Rafah. The situation of citizens throughout the region has gotten worse as the fighting has continued, even though things are worse in the strip’s north.
Guterres is scheduled to tour the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, one of the entry ports for the supplies, as well as Al Arish in the northern Sinai of Egypt, where a large portion of the international relief for Gaza is brought and heaped there.
He is anticipated to meet UN relief workers in Rafah and visit a hospital in Al Arish.
The humanitarian situation in Gaza has worsened, and the United States and other nations have tried to deploy ships and air drops to bring in more aid as prospects for a truce during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan have receded.
However, according to humanitarian organizations, only around 25% of the necessary supplies have been reaching Gaza, and the only way to meet the coastal enclave demands is to drastically speed up road delivery.
Except for one land border, Israel has kept all of its land crossings into the enclave closed. Israel has pledged to destroy Hamas and fears that the militant Palestinian group may reroute aid.
A worldwide food monitor issued a warning this week, stating that if a truce is not reached, starvation in northern Gaza would likely spread to other areas of the region.
According to local health authorities, Israel’s military operation in Gaza has claimed the lives of over 32,000 individuals, many of them women and children.
Israel initiated the attack in retaliation for an attack by Hamas that, according to Israeli estimates, resulted in about 1,200 deaths and over 250 hostages.
As part of his yearly “solidarity trip” to Muslim nations during Ramadan, Guterres, who visited Egypt’s border with Gaza just after the war began, is now in Jordan and Egypt.
He will break the fast with Sudanese refugees in Cairo, the capital of Egypt. A battle between competing military factions in Sudan has left almost 8.5 million people homeless, forced some to terrible famine, and sparked waves of ethnically motivated massacres in Darfur.
Source- Reuters
