UN Agency Chiefs Warn of ‘Utter Disregard for Human Life’ as Gaza Blockade Enters Second Month
Humanitarian Crises 08/04/2025 •
Rain falls on a camp in Khan Younis where some of the 1.9 million Palestinians displaced by the violence shelter.

Heads of six UN agencies including the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the World Food Programme issued a desperate warning that blockades of aid, food, medicine and life-saving supplies to Gaza since Israel resumed its attack on the enclave show “utter disregard for human life.”

“For over a month, no commercial or humanitarian supplies have entered Gaza,” the agency chiefs wrote in a joint statement with the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), and UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) on Monday.

“More than 2.1 million people are trapped, bombed and starved again, while, at crossing points, food, medicine, fuel and shelter supplies are piling up, and vital equipment is stuck,” the letter continues, calling on world leaders to “act – firmly, urgently and decisively – to ensure the basic principles of international humanitarian law are upheld.”

Since Israel broke the ceasefire in March, the humanitarian situation has dramatically deteriorated. The letter authored by UN leaders is the latest alarm sounded by humanitarians as Israel’s military enforces a blockade on essential food and medicine while its troops press deeper into Gaza. 

The Ministry of Health in Gaza reports that at least 50,523 Palestinians have been killed and 114,776 injured since the war began, including 1,163 deaths and 2,735 injuries since the escalation of hostilities three weeks ago. A study published in The Lancet in January found the statistics published by Gaza’s Health Ministry likely underestimate the true death toll by as much as 40%, placing the total deaths at 61,000 four months ago. 

Approximately 1.9 million Palestinians—nearly everyone in the territory—have been displaced by the fighting, most several times. Much of the territory has been leveled into uninhabitable rubble, with entire cities like Rafah, once home to hundreds of thousands of people, effectively deleted from the map.

“We are witnessing acts of war in Gaza that show an utter disregard for human life,” the UN leaders wrote. “Protect civilians. Facilitate aid. Release hostages. Renew a ceasefire.”

Israel launched the offensive in response to Hamas’s October 7, 2023 surprise attack on over a dozen Israeli communities on the periphery of the Gaza enclave, during which militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians. 

Another 251 Israelis and foreign nationals were taken hostage.  Over 100 hostages, mostly women and children, were released in an initial week-long truce in November, while several more were rescued alive and the bodies of others found in Gaza by the Israeli military. 

Israel’s UN mission in Geneva, responding to the UN agencies’ letter, did not refer directly to the humanitarian crisis or its blockade, blaming “the terrorist organization Hamas” as the “first and foremost cause of suffering in the Gaza Strip… cynically seeking to maximize civilian harm as a matter of strategy.”

“All international organizations” should “uniformly call for the immediate and unconditional release of the 59 hostages” still held by Hamas, the mission said.  Among the 59 hostages still held captive in Gaza, only 24 are believed by Israel to be alive.

Humanitarian progress reversed

As food stocks in #Gaza run out, WFP's various assistance programmes are gradually shutting down.◼️All WFP-supported bakeries are closed◼️Last food parcels were distributed this week◼️Hot meals continue, but supplies are running lowWe urgently need aid to enter Gaza.

— World Food Programme (@wfp.org) 2025-04-04T11:40:34.396Z

During the ceasefire, UN and humanitarian agencies made vital progress in Gaza after Israel temporarily ended its blockade – a practice that violates international humanitarian law’s prohibition on collective punishment of civilian populations. Aid workers rushed to alleviate the most urgent crises, treating malnourished children, rehabilitating hospitals, and replenishing critical food and medicine stocks.

“The latest ceasefire allowed us to achieve in 60 days what bombs, obstruction and lootings prevented us from doing in 470 days of war: life-saving supplies reaching nearly every part of Gaza,” the joint UN agency letter stated.

UNICEF began repairing critical wells and water points to increase safe drinking water access. Now that progress has been wiped away by renewed fighting and blockades.

“While this ceasefire offered a short respite, assertions that there is now enough food to feed all Palestinians in Gaza are far from the reality on the ground, and commodities are running extremely low,” the agency chiefs warned.

All 25 UN subsidized bakeries that were opened during the last reprieve have now closed due to a lack of cooking gas and flour. WFP reports approximately 5,700 tons of food stocks remain in Gaza—enough to support its operations for a maximum of two weeks.

With 91 percent of Gaza’s population facing crisis-level food insecurity, families are struggling amid unprecedented destruction and constant displacement, WFP said on Monday.

Health system on the brink

Latest data on Gaza’s health system according to the World Health Organization.

Gaza’s health infrastructure, already in ruins, now faces total collapse. The fragile system is overwhelmed by casualties, particularly among children, while essential medicines and supplies rapidly dwindle.

“The partially functional health system is overwhelmed. Essential medical and trauma supplies are rapidly running out, threatening to reverse hard-won progress in keeping the health system operational,” the joint letter states.

The situation is particularly dire for pregnant women and children. An estimated 55,000 women are pregnant in Gaza, with one-third facing high-risk pregnancies. Around 20% of the 130 babies born each day are pre-term, underweight, or born with complications, needing advanced care that is rapidly diminishing.

“Gaza continues to be one of the most dangerous places to be a child and where pregnancy is clouded by fear due to ongoing violence, displacement and lack of medical access,” WHO reported over the weekend.

Médecins Sans Frontières warns that the month-long siege has forced their teams to ration medications and turn patients away. Critical medications including pain killers, anesthetics, pediatric antibiotics, and medicines for chronic conditions are running out.

“The Israeli authorities have condemned the people of Gaza to unbearable suffering with their deadly siege,” says Myriam Laaroussi, MSF emergency coordinator in Gaza. “This deliberate infliction of harm on people is like a slow death; it must end immediately.”

“UNICEF has thousands of pallets of aid waiting to enter the Gaza Strip,” said UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa Edouard Beigbeder. “Most of this aid is lifesaving – yet instead of saving lives, it is sitting in storage. It must be allowed in immediately. This is not a choice or charity; it is an obligation under international law.”

As the blockade continues and bombs fall, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini echoed UNICEF’s concerns for Gaza’s youth, who represent nearly half of the territory’s population.

“The ceasefire at the beginning of the year gave Gaza’s children a chance to survive and be children,” said Lazzarini, citing a new UNICEF report which found an average of 100 children have been killed or injured in Gaza every day since the war began.

“The resumption of the war is again robbing them of their childhood,” Lazzarini added. “The war has turned Gaza into a ‘no land’ for children.”

Humanitarian workers in the crosshairs

More aid workers have died in Gaza than any conflict since data recording began.

The joint UN statement comes on the heels of a bloody incident near Gaza’s southern border in Rafah on 23 March, when Israeli forces shot dead 15 Palestinian emergency workers, before burying their bodies in a shallow grave along with the crushed remains of their vehicles.

A video released by the Palestine Red Crescent Society, obtained from the cell phone of one of the victims of the attack, contradicted initial Israeli military claims that the emergency vehicles were not properly marked. The footage, published by the New York Times, clearly showed ambulances with lights and emergency signals on when they came under fire.

“During [the] day and at night, it’s the same: external and internal lights are on. Everything tells you it’s an ambulance that belongs to the Palestinian Red Crescent,” the sole survivor of the incident, Munther Abed, told the BBC. “All the lights were on until we came under direct fire.”

The Palestine Red Crescent released a video made by a paramedic before he was killed by Israelis in Gaza, and called the deaths of 15 rescue workers “a full-fledged war crime.” Israel has said it is investigating, but Red Crescent officials called on the UN for an independent investigation.

— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) 2025-04-07T18:23:22.084Z

The world looked on as aid workers in Gaza have been killed at a rate unprecedented in modern humanitarian operations, making this the deadliest conflict for UN workers in the history of the organization founded after World War II.

Since 2023, 411 aid workers have been killed in the Occupied Palestinian Territories—more than eight times the total killed in the previous two decades combined. The recent period represents approximately 89% of all recorded aid worker deaths in the region’s history, including all previous conflicts with Israel, according to an International Aid Worker Security Database.

WHO has recorded 670 attacks on healthcare workers or facilities in Gaza and another 754 in the West Bank since the war began. Israel accuses Hamas of militarizing Gazan schools, healthcare facilities and hospitals, including the holding of numerous hostages in at least one hospital in the first stages of the war.

The toll on journalists is equally unprecedented in modern warfare. Between 147 and 232 journalists have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023—more than in the U.S. Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the wars in Yugoslavia, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan combined—according to the Brown Institute for the Costs of War.

“What is happening here, it defies decency, it defies humanity, it defies the law,” said Jonathan Whittall, head of OCHA’s office for the Occupied Palestinian Territory. “It really is a war without limits.”

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