GENEVA (AFP) — The U.N. Security Council is "complicit in the ongoing slaughter" in the Gaza Strip and must vote Friday to "lift the siege," the medical charity Doctors Without Borders said.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres convened an emergency Security Council meeting after two months of fighting which has left more than 17,000 people dead in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Doctors Without Borders said the council must demand an immediate and sustained cease-fire and ensure unrestricted aid into the Palestinian territory.
"To date, the inaction of the United Nations Security Council and vetoes from member states, particularly the United States, make them complicit in the ongoing slaughter; this inaction has given license to the mass killing of men, women and children," the medical charity said in a statement.
Guterres deployed the rarely used Article 99 of the U.N. Charter, under which he can bring to the council's attention "any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security."
"History will judge the delay in ending this slaughter; basic humanity demands action," the group said.
War erupted in Gaza after Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking hostages, 138 of whom remain captive, according to Israeli officials.
Israel's retaliatory air and ground assault on Gaza has killed 17,487 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in the besieged Palestinian territory.
"Temporary truces, humanitarian pauses, and the trickle of aid that has so far been allowed in, have been insultingly insufficient," said the Geneva-based charity. "The damage that has been done will require years of humanitarian support to alleviate; the scale of loss however, and the accompanying grief, may never be assuaged."
According to the group, in Gaza's Al-Aqsa hospital alone, 1,149 patients were received in the emergency ward from Dec. 1-7, of whom 350 were dead on arrival.
On Wednesday, "the hospital received more dead patients than injured," it said.
"People are desperate for food because of the cruel siege imposed on them. There needs to be some chance of survival; our doctors can do nothing for the dead," the organization's international secretary general Christopher Lockyear said. "Failure to act now, to enact a total cease-fire and end the siege, would be unforgivable."
The U.N. says about 80% of the Gaza population has been displaced, facing dire shortages of food, fuel, water and medicine, and the growing threat of disease.
Guterres says he wants a "humanitarian cease-fire" to prevent "a catastrophe with potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians" and the entire Middle East.
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by Agence France-Presse
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