UN Secretary-General António Guterres is visiting Egypt-Gaza border on Saturday to renew calls for a ceasefire.
His trip comes as Israel threatens to launch a major military operation in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, just over the border with Egypt, where most of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents take refuge.
Guterres will visit El Arish in Egypt’s northern Sinai, where most international aid for Gaza is delivered and stored, as well as the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing. He is likely to visit the hospital in El Arish and meet with UN aid workers in Rafah.
As hopes for a truce have faded and the humanitarian situation in Gaza has become increasingly desperate, the US and other countries are trying to use air and sea vessels to deliver aid. The airdrop deliveries on 8 March caused tragic circumstances in which 5 people died
Humanitarian organisations say that only a fifth of what is needed is reaching Gaza, and that the only way to meet the needs of the coastal enclave is to rapidly speed up the delivery of supplies by road. A global food monitor reported that famine in northern Gaza was imminent and could spread to other parts of the territory.
Israel launched the offensive in response to a Hamas attack in which some 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli figures. The Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip has killed more than 32,000 people, many of them women and children.
António Guterres is visiting Egypt and Jordan as part of an annual “solidarity trip” to Muslim countries during Ramadan.
