On Thursday, major international aid groups warned that it was now almost impossible to work in Gaza, as one accused countries providing arms to Israel of being complicit in what ‘amounts to genocide’.
Isabelle Defourny, president of Doctors Without Borders NGO, talked about the risk of genocide as 13 major humanitarian groups blasted Israel for restricting aid getting into the Gaza Strip.
The killing of seven aid workers from the US-based World Central Kitchen (WCK) by Israeli air strikes Monday has sparked an outburst.
‘I was extremely outraged and heartbroken by the attack’, said US President Joe Biden. ‘The United States, Britain, France and other countries were morally and politically complicit with what to our eyes amounts to genocide by providing military support to Israel’, said Defourny, president of MSF France.
The aid groups also demanded that Israel disown its plans to start a ground offensive on Rafah in the south of Gaza, where well over one million civilians are sheltering.
The bloodiest ever Gaza war happened with Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack which resulted in the deaths of about 1,170 Israelis and foreigners, most of them civilians, according to the media reports.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign, aimed at destroying Hamas, has killed at least 33,037 people, mostly women and children, as per the media reports.
While WCK has suspended its operations in Gaza, none of the 13 groups including Oxfam and Save the Children who made the joint call said they were pulling out.
Defourny, said the killing of the seven WCK employees was no surprise. She said the conditions today to deliver humanitarian assistance are not there in Gaza.
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