Aid shortages in Gaza could prove 'apocalyptic', warns UN's emergency relief chief

The UN's humanitarian chief has warned of "apocalyptic" consequences due to aid shortages in Gaza, where Israel's military offensive in the southern city of Rafah has blocked desperately needed food.

- Lorenzo Tondo

"If fuel runs out, aid doesn't get to the people where they need it. That famine, which we have talked about for so long, and which is looming, will not be looming any more.

It will be present," the UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, Martin Griffiths, told AFP on the sidelines of meetings with Qatari officials in Doha.

"And I think our worry, as citizens of the international community, is that the consequence is going to be really, really hard. Hard, difficult, and apocalyptic." Griffiths said 50 trucks of aid a day could reach the hardest-hit people north of Gaza through the reopened Erez crossing on the northern frontier. However, he added, the battles near the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings in Gaza's south meant the vital routes were in effect blocked.

"So aid getting in through land routes to the south and for Rafah, and the people dislodged by Rafah, is almost nil," Griffiths said. "And we all said that very clearly, that a Rafah operation is a disaster in humanitarian terms, a disaster for the people already displaced to Rafah. This is now their fourth or fifth displacement." Some relief supplies began flowing in this week via a temporary floating pier constructed by the US.