UN aid chief warns of 'apocalyptic' consequences of Gaza shortages

The stranglehold on aid reaching Gaza threatens an "apocalyptic" outcome, the U.N.'s humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said on Sunday as he warned of famine in the besieged territory.

"If fuel runs out, aid doesn't get to the people where they need it, that famine, which we have talked about for so long, and which is looming, will not be looming anymore. It will be present," Griffiths said.

"And I think our worry, as citizens of the international community, is that the consequence is going to be really, really hard. Hard, difficult, and apocalyptic," he told AFP on the sidelines of meetings with Qatari officials in Doha.

An Israeli incursion into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, launched in the face of international outcry, has deepened an already perilous humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

Griffith, the U.N.'s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said some 50 trucks of aid per day could reach the hardest-hit north of Gaza through the reopened Erez crossing.

But battles near the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings in Gaza's south meant the vital routes were "effectively blocked", he explained.

"So aid getting in through land routes to the south and for Rafah, and the people dislodged by Rafah is almost nil," Griffiths added.

'Disaster'

The U.N. said on Saturday that 800,000 people had been "forced to flee" Israel's assault on Hamas militants in Rafah.

With fuel, food and medicine running out, Griffiths said the military action in the southern Gazan city was "exactly what we feared it would be".

"And we all said that very clearly that a Rafah operation is a disaster in humanitarian terms, a disaster for the people already...