Israel-Hamas war live: World Food Programme says ‘catastrophic hunger crisis’ is intensifying in Gaza | Israel-Hamas war

Emma Graham-Harrison

Two first responders from Israel addressed the UN meeting in person.

Simcha Greinman, who collected victims’ remains from the sites of attacks, described finding a woman’s body, naked from the waist down, leaning over a bed. The corpse had been booby trapped with a live grenade, hidden in the woman’s hand, he added.

Among the bodies he recovered were two people who had suffered genital mutilation, one a woman who had “nails and different objects” in her genitals, the other so badly damaged “we couldn’t even identify if its a man or a woman”.

Shari Mendes, an architect who prepares bodies for burial, said her team leader “saw several female soldiers who were shot in the crotch, intimate parts, vagina, or shot in the breast. This seemed to be systematic genital mutilation of a group of victims.”

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand described video of a fresh bloodstain on the crotch of a teenage hostage, visible when she was dragged out of a Jeep in Gaza soon after her abduction, as evidence of sexual assault, and joined other speakers calling for activists to condemn Hamas. She told the meeting:

When I saw the list of women’s rights organisations who have said nothing, I nearly choked. Where is the solidarity?

A UN commission of inquiry investigating war crimes on both sides of the Israel-Hamas conflict has said it would focus on sexual violence by Hamas in the 7 October attacks on Israel and was about to launch an appeal for evidence, Reuters reported last week.

However its work is likely to be hampered by the fact that Israel has not cooperated with the commission, which it accuses of having an anti-Israel bias.

Emma Graham-Harrison

The United Nations has heard accounts of sexual violence during the 7 October attacks by Hamas, in a meeting where speakers also attacked women’s rights activists and UN officials for not doing more to investigate or condemn these crimes.

Israeli officials and frontline workers, senior US politicians and activists from both countries spoke at the meeting on Monday, organised in part by former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg. She told those gathered that “silence is complicity”.

Hamas denies that its fighters carried out sexual violence; Sandberg asked if the world should believe them, or “the women whose bodies tell us how they spent the last minutes of their lives” and called for a “full and fair investigation” from the UN.

Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, in a recorded message, said:

It is outrageous that some who claim to stand for justice are closing their minds and their hearts to the victims of Hamas.

The meeting, attended by about 800 people including diplomats from dozens of countries, watched videos from police interviews with first responders who described genital mutilation and shooting at breasts. A survivor of the attack on the Supernova rave described witnessing a gang-rape.

The UN’s top aid official has said the Israeli military campaign in southern Gaza has been just as devastating as in the north, creating “apocalyptic” conditions and ending any possibility of meaningful humanitarian operations.

Martin Griffiths, the UN emergency relief coordinator, said he was speaking on behalf of the entire international aid community in saying the continuing offensive had robbed aid workers of any significant means of helping the 2.3 million people of Gaza, other than to call for an immediate end to the fighting.

“What we’re saying today is: that’s enough now. It has to stop,” Griffiths said in an interview with the Guardian, adding that the small amount of aid being allowed into Gaza could no longer be distributed, since the Israeli ground offensive had spread to southern Gaza and the city of Khan Younis, bringing the humanitarian operation effectively to an end.

“It isn’t really a statistically significant operation any more,” said Griffiths, who is also UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs.

It’s a bit of a patch on a wound and it doesn’t do the job, and it would be an illusion for the world to think that the people in Gaza can be helped by the humanitarian operation under these conditions.

This is an apocalyptic situation now, because these are the remnants of a nation being driven into a pocket in the south.

Read the full interview here.

A “catastrophic hunger crisis” is intensifying in Gaza, the Nobel Peace prize-winning World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Tuesday as Israeli military operations escalate.

In a statement, the Rome-based United Nations group called for a resumption of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that broke down last week.

The pause in fighting had allowed aid to reach places previously out of reach:

The resumption of hostilities in Gaza will only intensify the catastrophic hunger crisis that already threatens to overwhelm the civilian population.

The seven-day pause in fighting allowed WFP and our partners some safety to scale up relief operations. In that time, we were able to double the number of distribution points outside shelters and deliver food in places that had been impossible to reach, including in some northern areas. WFP reached approximately 250,000 people in just one week.

Tragically, this desperately needed progress is now being lost. The renewed fighting makes the distribution of aid almost impossible and endangers the lives of humanitarian workers. Above all, it is a disaster for the civilian population of Gaza, more than 2m people, whose only lifeline is food assistance.

Humanitarians must have safe, unimpeded, and sustained access, so we are able to distribute life-saving assistance throughout the territory. All parties must uphold their obligations under international humanitarian law.

But only a lasting peace can end the suffering and avert the looming humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. WFP calls for a humanitarian ceasefire and urges all leaders to work with the utmost urgency to find political solutions that can end the suffering of families on all sides of this harrowing conflict.

USAID chief Power: Palestinian civilians ‘must be protected’

Julian Borger

Samantha Power, administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), has been speaking about the civilian death toll in Gaza.

Power, an expert on the international response to genocide and mass atrocities before she joined government, has consistently been the most outspoken of Biden administration officials in describing the impact on civilians of Israel’s military campaign.

Talking to reporters in el-Arish, near Egypt’s border with Gaza, Power said:

First, as Israel’s military operations continue, Palestinian civilians must be protected. Far too many innocent civilians have been killed. Some parents in Gaza are writing names on their children’s legs so that they can be identified if they or their families are killed.

Other parents are having their children split up, sheltering at different locations, putting them with different relatives, so as to increase the chances that at least some of them will survive.

No parent should ever have to make choices like that. Military operations need to be conducted in a way that distinguishes fighters from civilians.

Power is in Egypt overseeing the delivery of 36,000lb (16,330kg) of US humanitarian relief supplies.

The airlift was “delivered via a US Air Force C-17 to Egypt to subsequently be transported via ground into Gaza and then distributed by UN agencies”, Brig Gen Pat Ryder told a Pentagon press briefing on Tuesday.

Rishi Sunak expressed his “disappointment” about the breakdown of the pause in fighting in Gaza during a call with Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, Downing Street said.

A No 10 spokesperson said the UK prime minister “expressed disappointment about the breakdown of the pause in fighting in Gaza, which had allowed hostages to be released”.

The two leaders also discussed “urgent efforts to ensure all remaining hostages are safely freed and to allow any remaining British nationals in Gaza to leave”, they said. The statement continues:

The prime minister offered an update on his engagement with leaders in the Middle East and reiterated his public remarks in the region last week, stressing the need for Israel to take greater care to protect civilians in Gaza and focus narrowly on military targets.

The prime minister said more humanitarian aid had to be allowed to enter Gaza, where civilians were in desperate need. He reiterated offers of practical UK support to facilitate deliveries of life-saving aid. He noted the pressure on the Rafah crossing point and pressed the need to explore other routes into Gaza, including via Kerem Shalom.