UN aid chief warns of ‘gravest crimes’ committed in Israel’s war on Gaza

Joyce Msuya tells UN Security Council that the ‘daily cruelty we see in Gaza seems to have no limits’.

The United Nations’s humanitarian aid chief told a meeting of the Security Council (UNSC) that “acts reminiscent of the gravest international crimes” are being committed in Gaza where Israel’s military continues to bombard, besiege and prevent aid from reaching the civilian population.

Addressing the UNSC on Tuesday, Joyce Msuya, the interim chief of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), described Israel’s monthlong ground offensive and ongoing siege of northern Gaza as an “intensified, extreme, and accelerated version of the horrors of the past year” in the Palestinian territory.

Palestinian civilians have been driven from their homes by Israel’s military and “forced to witness their family members killed, burned and buried alive” in Gaza, which Msuya described as “a wasteland of rubble”.

“We are witnessing acts reminiscent of the gravest international crimes,” she warned the council meeting.

“The daily cruelty we see in Gaza seems to have no limits,” she said, firmly pointing the finger of blame at Israel for blocking aid from entering Gaza’s besieged north.