FM urges int'l action to avert hunger, disease in Gaza

TIRANA

Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has issued a plea to the international community to intervene and prevent a looming humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip, where hunger and epidemics are rampant among populations denied access to aid.

"While we have lost thousands of people from bullets and bombs, at this point, we are facing the danger of millions of Palestinians taken hostage by Israel in Gaza being massacred by hunger and epidemics," Fidan remarked at a joint press conference with his Albanian counterpart in Tirana on Jan. 29.

The Gaza conflict has forced over a million Palestinians to seek refuge in the far-southern Rafah area near the Egyptian border, according to the U.N., deepening the humanitarian crisis.

Hunger and disease have spread in crowded tent cities where families shelter in makeshift tents against the cold winter rain and mud while fearing more air strikes.

"The efforts and intentions of the international community to date have not made it possible for aid to come in," Fidan stated. "I hereby invite the international community to take measures to prevent the destruction of 2 million people held hostage by hunger and epidemics by using different methods. Otherwise, it may be too late."

Expressing concern over the "moral burden of allowing hundreds of thousands to perish" due to hunger, Fidan stressed the need for innovative approaches to deliver assistance to Gaza, "even if it entails surpassing existing protocols."

Alarm over the Palestinians' plight has heightened amid a bitter row over the main U.N. aid agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, after Israel charged several of its staff partook in the Oct. 7 attack.

Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, warned that some key donor countries' suspension of funding for the agency "overtly defies" an International Court of Justice order to allow more aid into Gaza.