Extract from ABC News
A long line of blocked relief trucks on Egypt's side of the border with the Gaza Strip, where people are facing starvation, is a moral outrage, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Saturday.
During a visit to the Rafah crossing, Mr Guterres said it was time for Israel to provide an "ironclad commitment" to unfettered access to humanitarian goods throughout Gaza.
He also called for the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
The UN would continue to work with Egypt to "streamline" the flow of aid into Gaza, Mr Guterres said.
"Here from this crossing, we see the heartbreak and heartlessness of it all," he said.
"A long line of blocked relief trucks on one side of the gates, the long shadow of starvation on the other. That is more than tragic. It is a moral outrage."
Mr Guterres's comments come as Israel faces global pressure to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza, which has been devastated by more than five months of war between Israel and Hamas.
Israel is threatening to launch a major military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, just over the border from Egypt, despite international appeals against such an attack.
A majority of Gaza's 2.3 million residents are sheltering around Rafah.
Mr Guterres said on Saturday there was a clear international consensus that any ground assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah would cause a humanitarian catastrophe.
Though conditions are worse in the north of the strip, the plight of civilians across the territory has deteriorated sharply as the conflict has ground on.
Before his stop at the border, where he met UN humanitarian workers, Mr Guterres landed in Al Arish in Egypt's North Sinai, where much of the international relief for Gaza is delivered and stockpiled.
Regional governor Mohamed Shusha said some 7,000 trucks were waiting at the border to deliver aid to Gaza, but inspection procedures demanded by Israel had held up the flow of relief.
Mr Guterres also visited a hospital in Al Arish, where Palestinians evacuated from Gaza are receiving treatment.
As hopes for a truce in Gaza during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan have faded and the humanitarian situation in Gaza has become more desperate, the United States and other countries have sought to use air drops and ships to deliver aid.
But humanitarians say only about one-fifth of the required amount of supplies has been entering Gaza, and that the only way to meet needs is to rapidly accelerate deliveries by road.
Time for 'ironclad commitment by Israel'
Israel, which has vowed to destroy Hamas and is worried that the Palestinian militant group will divert aid to itself, has kept all but one of its land crossings into the enclave closed.
It opened its Kerem Shalom crossing close to Rafah in late December, and denies accusations by Egypt and UN aid agencies that it has delayed deliveries of humanitarian relief.
This week, a global food monitor warned that famine was imminent in northern Gaza and could spread to other parts of the territory if a ceasefire is not agreed upon.
"It's time for an ironclad commitment by Israel for total, unfettered access for humanitarian goods throughout Gaza," Mr Guterres said.
"It's time to truly flood Gaza with life-saving aid. The choice is clear: either surge or starvation."
More than 32,000 people have been killed by Israel's military campaign in Gaza, many of them women and children, according to local health authorities.
Israel launched the assault in response to an attack on Israel by Hamas in which some 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
Mr Guterres, who made one previous trip to Egypt's border with Gaza shortly after the war broke out, is visiting Egypt and Jordan as part of an annual "solidarity trip" to Muslim countries during Ramadan.
Deaths mount in Al-Shifa hospital raid
Fighting raged on Saturday around Gaza's main hospital where Israel says it has so far killed more than 170 gunmen in an extensive raid, which the Palestinian Ministry of Health says has also resulted in the deaths of five patients.
The armed wing of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad said their fighters were engaged in battles with the Israeli forces outside and around the vicinity of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, though Hamas denies any presence inside the facility.
Israeli troops stormed Al-Shifa in the early hours of Monday morning and have been combing through the sprawling complex, which the military says is connected to a tunnel network used as a base for Hamas and other Palestinian fighters.
The Gaza Health Ministry said five wounded Palestinians "besieged" inside Al-Shifa died as a result of being denied proper care, water and food for the past six days and that the condition of other injured patients was deteriorating.
The Israeli military, which has lost two soldiers in combat at the hospital, says it is preventing harm to civilians, patients and medical staff there and providing them with food, water and adequate access to healthcare.
Reuters has been unable to access the hospital and verify either account.
Al-Shifa, the Gaza Strip's biggest hospital before the war, is now one of the few healthcare facilities even partially operational in the north of the territory, and had also been housing displaced civilians.
Residents living nearby said Israeli forces blew up dozens of houses and apartments in the streets around the hospital and bulldozed roads. They said a nearby private medical centre, Al-Helo Hospital, was also hit by the army.
The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said Israeli tanks hit several buildings at Al-Shifa Hospital and set fire to a surgery department and that around 240 patients and their companions as well as dozens of healthcare staff had been detained.
The Israeli military said that more than 350 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants have so far been detained at the hospital and a total of 800 people have been questioned.
In recent days, Hamas spokespeople have said that the dead announced in previous Israeli statements were not fighters but patients and displaced people.
Israel faced heavy criticism last November when troops first raided the hospital. The troops uncovered tunnels there, which they said had been used as command and control centres by Hamas.
Israeli forces shot and killed Palestinian pharmacologist, Mohammad Al-Nono outside Al-Shifa hospital after they ordered him to evacuate, along with some colleagues, his family said.
A member of the family said they learned about his death from other doctors. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip, according to health authorities in the Hamas-ruled enclave.
Reuters
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