A top UN official has warned the deteriorating situation in Gaza is the worst humanitarian crisis he has ever seen in his 50-year career.
Speaking to Sky News’ Yalda Hakim, Martin Griffiths said it was because “people can’t escape. They’re blocked in, they’re not able to run out of Gaza“.
“I think this is the worst [crisis] in my 50 years of experience.”
The UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs said it was worse than “awful scenes” he witnessed during the civil war in Syria a few years ago and worse than the “horrors” that were the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in the 1970s.
He compared the situation in Gaza with the current war in Sudan where “the suffering is quite likely on a similar scene” – but although eight million people have been displaced, one and a half million have left the country in northeast Africa.
“Now I’m not saying that’s a wonderful thing, but it’s a choice that they can make. This is not a choice that can be made in Gaza,” he said.
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Since the war began on 7 October last year when Hamas launched its deadly attack on Israel, about 80% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes due to retaliatory Israeli strikes.
Large areas in northern Gaza have been completely destroyed, the majority of people have moved further south, and a humanitarian crisis has left a quarter of the population starving.
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Image: Palestinian children wait to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen amid desperate shortages of food in Rafah. Pic: Reuters
In Rafah, 1.4 million people – over half the territory’s population – are crammed into tent camps and overflowing apartments and shelters in the city.
Mr Griffiths warned that if there was such a ground operation by Israeli forces, “please don’t think that a humanitarian operation can manage to help people in the way that we would like. It won’t.”
He added: “With a compression of over a million people into that pocket, down around Rafah, without any choice of them being able to go further south… we’re extremely worried about the lack of operating conditions for any kind of humanitarian operation.”
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‘Disease is spreading fast’
He also said: “We have huge problems of access. We have increasing episodes of civil disorder, which impede our access and attack our drivers.
“We’re having great difficulty getting aid into Gaza now. If Rafah was attacked and if Rafah closed, it would be even more difficult.”
Speaking about the risk the whole of the territory faces, Mr Griffiths said: “We don’t think there is anywhere safe for people to move within Gaza. So the idea of evacuating them to some place of safety, we think is illusory.”
Hamas killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in its cross-border raid on Israel on 7 October and took around 250 others hostage. In retaliatory Israeli strikes, at least 28,576 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Mr Griffiths has negotiated with terrorists during his long career and he said Israel needs to negotiate an end to the war with Hamas, despite Mr Netanyahu vowing to destroy the militant group.
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Analyst watches Hamas leader tunnel video
The UN official said: “I think it’s very, very difficult to dislodge these groups without a negotiated solution, which includes their aspirations.
“I cannot think of an example off-hand of a place where a victory through warfare has succeeded against a well-entrenched, group, terrorist or otherwise.”
Mr Griffiths added: “What I found is that the dialogue is a better instrument, even with terrorists to engage and solve or resolve differences.”
He said: “I’m really glad you’ve covered Sudan, I think that is exemplary and is wonderful that you’ve done so, because with international attention comes help for our operations, comes help for the people of Sudan.
“Sudan is a place where our absence of knowledge denies us a real sense of the extent of suffering, but the numbers tell the story.”
He said 25 million people need humanitarian assistance in Sudan, eight million people have left their homes, and there have been 10,000 cases of cholera.
“And barely any diplomacy. We need access.
“So we’ve been trying very hard to get the two militaries together, again, to engage in planning on our own access planning, convoy routes and so forth.”
:: See the full interview with Martin Griffiths on The World with Yalda Hakim on Sky News from 9pm tonight.
A large-scale Russian attack through the night into Sunday injured at least 11 in Kyiv and killed three people in towns surrounding the capital.
There were attacks elsewhere as well, including drone strikes in Mykolaiv, where a residential building was hit.
Image: An apartment building destroyed after a Russian attack in Mykolaiv. Pic: State Emergency Service of Ukraine
‘Massive’ attack
In Kyiv, the city’s administration warned “the night will be difficult”, as people were urged to remain in shelters.
The city’s mayor Vitaliy Klitschko described it as a “massive” attack.
He said: “Explosions in the city. Air defence forces are working. The capital is under attack by enemy UAVs. Do not neglect your safety! Stay in shelters!”
It came after at least 15 people were injured in attacks the night prior.
Russia claimed it also faced a Ukrainian drone attack on Sunday, and that it intercepted and destroyed around 100 of them near Moscow and across Russia’s central and southern regions.
Image: A municipality worker cleans up after a Russian drone strike on Kyiv. Pic: Reuters
Russia ‘dragging out the war’
Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine continued a prisoner exchange, marking a rare moment of cooperation in the war.
Amid the most recent attacks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repeated his calls for sanctions on Russia.
Russia “fills each day with horror and murder” and is “simply dragging out the war”, he said.
Image: A resident looks at an apartment building that was damaged in a Russian drone strike. Pic: Reuters
“All of this demands a response – a strong response from the United States, from Europe, and from everyone in the world who wants this war to end,” Mr Zelenskyy added.
Every day “gives new grounds for sanctions against Russia”, he said, and each day without pressure proves the “war will continue”.
Ukraine, meanwhile, is ready for “any form of diplomacy that delivers real results”.
Nine of a doctor’s 10 children have been killed in an Israeli missile strike on their home in Gaza, which also left her surviving son badly injured and her husband in a critical condition.
Warning: This article contains details of child deaths
Alaa Al Najjar, a paediatrician at Al Tahrir Clinic in the Nasser Medical Complex, was at work during the attack on her home, south of the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, on Friday.
Graphic footage shared by the Hamas-run Palestinian Civil Defence shows the bodies of at least seven small children being pulled from the rubble.
Rescuers can be seen battling fires and searching through a collapsed building, shouting out when they locate a body, before bringing the children out one by one and wrapping their remains in body bags.
In the footage, Dr Al Najjar’s husband, Hamdi Al Najjar, who is also a doctor, is put on to a stretcher and then carried to an ambulance.
The oldest of their children was only 12 years old, according to Dr Muneer Alboursh, the director general of Gaza’s health ministry, which is run by Hamas.
Image: Nine children were killed in the strike. Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
“This is the reality our medical staff in Gaza endure. Words fall short in describing the pain,” he wrote in a social media post.
“In Gaza, it is not only healthcare workers who are targeted – Israel’s aggression goes further, wiping out entire families.”
Image: Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
British doctors describe ‘horrific’ and ‘unimaginable’ attack
Two British doctors working at Nasser Hospital described the attack as “horrific” and “unimaginable” for Dr Al Najjar.
Speaking in a video diary on Friday night, Dr Graeme Groom said his last patient of the day was Dr Al Najjar’s 11-year-old son, who was badly injured and “seemed much younger as we lifted him on to the operating table”.
Image: Hamdi Al Najjar, Dr Al Najjar’s husband who is also a doctor, was taken to hospital. Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
The strike “may or may not have been aimed at his father”, Dr Groom said, adding that the man had been left “very badly injured”.
Dr Victoria Rose said the family “lived opposite a petrol station, so I don’t know whether the bomb set off some massive fire”.
Image: Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
‘No political or military connections’
Dr Groom added: “It is unimaginable for that poor woman, both of them are doctors here.
“The father was a physician at Nasser Hospital. He had no political and no military connections. He doesn’t seem to be prominent on social media, and yet his poor wife is the only uninjured one, who has the prospect of losing her husband.”
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Nineteen of Gaza’s hospitals remain operational, all of them are overwhelmed with the number of patients and a lack of supplies
He said it was “a particularly sad day”, while Dr Rose added: “That is life in Gaza. That is the way it goes in Gaza.”
Sky News has approached the Israeli Defence Forces for comment.
Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza began when the militant group stormed across the border into Israel on 7 October 2023, killing some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and abducting 251 others.
Israel’s military response has flattened large areas of Gaza and killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count.
The head of the UN has said Israel has only authorised for Gaza what amounts to a “teaspoon” of aid after at least 60 people died in overnight airstrikes.
UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said on Friday the supplies approved so far “amounts to a teaspoon of aid when a flood of assistance is required,” adding “the needs are massive and the obstacles are staggering”.
He warned that more people will die unless there is “rapid, reliable, safe and sustained aid access”.
Image: A woman at the site of an Israeli strike in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Pic: Reuters
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Gaza: ‘Loads of children with huge burns’
Israel says around 300 aid trucks have been allowed through since it lifted an 11-week blockade on Monday, but according to Mr Guterres, only about a third have been transported to warehouses within Gaza due to insecurity.
The IDF said 107 vehicles carrying flour, food, medical equipment and drugs were allowed through on Thursday.
Many of Gaza’s two million residents are at high risk of famine, experts have warned.
Meanwhile, at least 60 people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes across Gaza overnight.
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Ten people died in the southern city of Khan Younis, and deaths were also reported in the central town of Deir al-Balah and the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north, according to the Nasser, Al-Aqsa and Al-Ahli hospitals where the bodies were brought.
Image: A body is carried out of rubble after an Israeli strike in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Pic: Reuters
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‘Almost everyone depends on aid’ in Gaza
The latest strikes came a day after two Israeli embassy workers were killed in Washington.
The suspect, named as 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, Illinois, told police he “did it for Gaza”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney of fuelling antisemitism following the shootings.
Mr Netanyahu also accused Sir Keir, Mr Macron and Mr Carney of siding with “mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers”.
Image: Palestinians search for casualties in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Pic: Reuters
But UK government minister Luke Pollard told Sky News on Friday morning he “doesn’t recognise” Mr Netanyahu’s accusation.
Earlier this week, Mr Netanyahu said he was recalling negotiators from the Qatari capital, Doha, after a week of ceasefire talks failed to bring results. A working team will remain.
The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on 7 October 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 251 others.
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The militants are still holding 58 captives, around a third of whom are believed to be alive, after most of the rest were returned in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
Israel’s offensive, which has destroyed large swaths of Gaza, has killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.