Jersey’s chief minister has condemned the ongoing crisis in Gaza, calling for an “immediate cessation of violence against civilians and the release of all hostages”.

Deputy Lyndon Farnham said he had written to UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, urging British pressure being maintained to end the conflict.

Farnham said although Jersey was aligned with the UK in matters of international relations, the escalation of conflict had compelled him to “engage directly with the foreign secretary to ensure Jersey’s position is reiterated and understood”.

He also said: “What we are witnessing in Gaza is a humanitarian tragedy on a devastating scale.”

Israel is facing intensifying international condemnation for its killing of starving Palestinian civilians in Gaza, and its attacks on humanitarian efforts, as the UN secretary general, António Guterres, said the “last lifelines keeping people alive [in the strip] are collapsing”.

An angry chorus of senior figures, among them the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, and a senior Catholic cleric, expressed on Tuesday a growing sense of global horror over Israel’s actions.

“I spoke again with [the Israeli foreign minister] Gideon Saar to recall our understanding on aid flow and made clear that IDF [Israel Defense Forces] must stop killing people at distribution points,” the EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, wrote on X. “The killing of civilians seeking aid in Gaza is indefensible.”

She said “all options were on the table” if Israel does not deliver on aid pledges, but did not say what those options included.

According to UN officials on Tuesday, more than 1,000 desperate Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since the end of May trying to reach food distributions run by the controversial US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) amid widening conditions of starvation in the Palestinian territory.

The comments came as Israeli forces attacked warehousing and staff accommodation in Deir al-Balah – Gaza’s main aid hub – belonging to the World Health Organization.

The Israeli strikes on WHO facilities came as Israel cancelled the work visa of Jonathan Whittall, the head of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) inside Gaza and the most senior UN aid official in the coastal strip.

Speaking to the UN security council on Tuesday, Guterres described the situation in Gaza as a “horror show” condemning the Israeli attacks on UN offices.

“Malnourishment is soaring and starvation is knocking on every door in Gaza,”Guterres said. “And now we are seeing the last gasp of a humanitarian system built on humanitarian principles. That system is being denied the conditions to function. Denied the space to deliver. Denied the safety to save lives.”

Guterres’ comments came hours after a hard-hitting joint statement on Monday by 27 western countries including the UK, France, Australia and Canada harshly criticising Israel’s restrictions on humanitarian aid and calling for an immediate end to the war.

View image in fullscreen The aftermath of an Israeli military operation in Deir al-Balah. Photograph: Hatem Khaled/Reuters

Guterres said he “deplored the growing reports of children and adults suffering from malnutrition” as health officials in Gaza reported a further 33 deaths, including 12 children, in the past 48 hours.

Lammy amplified that message in an interview with the BBC on Tuesday, describing himself as “appalled [and] sickened” by what was happening in Gaza.

“These are not words that are usually used by a foreign secretary who is attempting to be diplomatic,” Lammy said.

“But when you see innocent children holding out their hand for food, and you see them shot and killed in the way that we have seen in the last few days, of course Britain must call it out.”

Thameen Al-Kheetan, a UN human rights office spokesperson, said: “Over 1,000 Palestinians have now been killed by the Israeli military while trying to get food in Gaza since the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation started operating.

“As of 21 July, we have recorded 1,054 people killed in Gaza while trying to get food; 766 of them were killed in the vicinity of GHF sites and 288 near UN and other humanitarian organisations’ aid convoys.”

The head of the UN’s main agency for Palestinians, Unrwa, on Tuesday described Gaza as a “hell on earth”.

Philippe Lazzarini said Unrwa’s own staff, as well as doctors and humanitarian workers, were fainting on duty owing to hunger and exhaustion as Israel limited access to life-saving humanitarian aid, and that many were surviving on a single small meal a day.

“Caretakers, including Unrwa colleagues in Gaza, are also in need of care now – doctors, nurses, journalists, humanitarians, among them Unrwa staff, are hungry. Many are now fainting due to hunger and exhaustion while performing their duties,” he said in a statement at a media briefing in Geneva.

The UN World Food Programme on Monday said its assessments showed a quarter of the population of Gaza was facing “famine-like” conditions and almost 100,000 women and children were suffering from severe acute malnutrition.

The most recent assessment of hunger in Gaza by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a group that includes the World Food Programme and the WHO, said about 10% of the territory’s population – 244,000 people – were facing catastrophic levels of hunger and 93% were experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity.

View image in fullscreen Displaced Palestinians inspect shelters damaged during the Israeli military operation. Photograph: Hatem Khaled/Reuters

Separately, the Roman Catholic church’s most senior cleric in the Holy Land said the humanitarian situation in Gaza was “morally unacceptable”, after visiting the wartorn Palestinian territory.

“We have seen men holding out in the sun for hours in the hope of a simple meal,” Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, told a news conference. “It’s morally unacceptable and unjustified.”

Despite the high-profile criticism in recent days, aid agencies have criticised the lack of meaningful action by the governments who signed the joint statement, including the UK, against Israel.

Kristyan Benedict, of Amnesty International UK, said the British government’s “failure to take robust measures to prevent genocide is no accident”, adding that “as a state party to the genocide convention, the UK has a legal duty to prevent and punish genocide – a duty it is failing miserably to uphold”.

The growing international furore came as Israeli troops pushed into the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, where a number of international aid organisations are based, in what appeared to be the latest effort to carve up the Palestinian territory with military corridors.

Deir al-Balah is the only city in the Gaza Strip that has not experienced major ground operations or suffered widespread devastation in 21 months of war, leading to speculation that the Hamas militant group holds large numbers of hostages there.

This has been a hard war for journalists to report.

They were taken by surprise on 7 October when Hamas attacked, and since then Israel has banned international journalists from Gaza to report freely. Palestinian journalists inside the Strip have done valiant work, and nearly 200 have been killed doing their jobs.

But key facts are clear. Hamas committed a series of war crimes in the attacks it launched on 7 October, killing 1,200 people, mainly Israeli civilians. Hamas took 251 hostages, of which perhaps 20 who are still being held inside Gaza are believed to be alive.

And there is clear evidence that Israel has committed a series of war crimes since then.

Israel’s list includes the starvation of Gaza’s civilians, the failure to protect them during military operations in which Israeli forces killed tens of thousands of innocents, and the wanton destruction of entire towns in a manner that is not proportionate to the military risk Israel faces.

Netanyahu and his former defence minister are the subject of arrest warrants for war crimes issued by the International Criminal Court. They insist on their innocence.

Israel has also condemned a legal process at the International Court of Justice which alleges that it is committing genocide against Palestinians. Israel denies the accusations, and claims they are antisemitic “blood libels”.

Israel is running out of friends. Allies who rallied around after the 7 October Hamas attacks have lost patience with Israel’s conduct in Gaza.

Even Israel’s most important ally, Donald Trump, is reported to be losing patience with Netanyahu after being taken by surprise when the Israeli leader ordered the bombing of Damascus – attacking Syria’s new regime, which Trump has recognised and encouraged.

Other western allies of Israel ran out of patience months ago.

Another joint statement, condemning Israel’s actions, was signed on 21 July by foreign ministers from the UK, much of the European Union, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. They used strong words to describe civilian suffering in Gaza, and the failing and deadly aid distribution system run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) that Israel introduced to replace tried and trusted methods used by the UN and leading global relief groups.

“The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths,” the statement said, external.

“The Israeli government’s aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity. We condemn the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food. It is horrifying that over 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid.

“The Israeli Government’s denial of essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population is unacceptable. Israel must comply with its obligations under international humanitarian law.”

Health officials said a 13-year-old boy, Abdul Hamid al-Ghalban, also died in the southern city of Khan Younis. Photos from AFP and Anadolu news agencies showed the teenager’s small body being prepared for burial at Nasser hospital and then carried in a white shroud.

Palestinian media meanwhile posted a video showing the body of a six-week-old boy, Yousef al-Safadi, who health officials said died at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City due to malnutrition.

The US-based medical humanitarian group MedGlobal also said in a statement that its nutritional teams in Gaza had witnessed five severely malnourished children, aged between three months and four years old, die within the past three days.

“This is a deliberate and human-made disaster,” MedGlobal’s executive director, Joseph Belliveau, said. “Those children died because there is not enough food in Gaza and not enough medicines, including IV fluids and therapeutic formula, to revive them.”

MedGlobal said that since the beginning of July, cases of acutely malnourished, mainly children, had nearly tripled at its facilities, indicating a widespread food crisis.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) also said that it was receiving “SOS” messages from its staff in Gaza, saying they were desperately short of food.

Some Unrwa doctors and aid workers had reportedly been fainting while working, due to hunger and exhaustion, it added.

Earlier this week, the World Food Programme (WFP) reported that malnutrition was surging, with 90,000 women and children in urgent need of treatment, and that nearly one person in three was not eating for days.

It noted that food aid was the only way for most people to access any food because prices in local markets had skyrocketed. It said a 1kg (2.2lb) bag of flour now cost over $100 (£74).

The WFP called for a “massive scale-up in food aid distribution” and said it had food supplies nearby and teams on the ground ready to respond.

The UN says a minimum of 600 aid lorries a day need to enter Gaza. However, the UN Organisation for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said it was only permitted to bring in 1,600 lorries of aid between May and July – an average of around 27 per day.

The Israeli foreign ministry said on Sunday that it had allowed 4,400 lorry loads of aid to enter Gaza over the past two months, and that 700 loads were waiting to be picked up by UN agencies from crossing points.

The UN has said that it struggles to pick up and distribute supplies because of the ongoing hostilities, Israeli restrictions on humanitarian movements, and fuel shortages.

WHO says facilities in Gaza attacked

CEASEFIRE URGED: Israeli allies the UK, France, Australia, Canada and 21 other countries, plus the EU, issued a joint statement that said the war ‘must end now’

AFP, DEIR AL-BALAH, Palestinian Territories

The WHO on Monday said that its facilities in Gaza had come under Israeli attack, echoing calls from Western nations for an immediate ceasefire as Israel expanded military operations to the central city of Deir al-Balah.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the Israeli military had entered the UN agency’s staff residence, forced women and children to evacuate on foot, and handcuffed, stripped and interrogated male staff at gunpoint.

Earlier, more than two dozen Western nations called for an immediate end to the war, saying suffering there had “reached new depths.”

Palestinians carry supplies after trucks loaded with aid entered from Israel through central Gaza yesterday. Photo: Reuters

After more than 21 months of fighting that have triggered catastrophic humanitarian conditions for Gaza’s more than 2 million people, Israeli allies the UK, France, Australia, Canada and 21 other nations, plus the EU, in a joint statement said that the war “must end now.”

“The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths,” the signatories added, urging a negotiated ceasefire, the release of hostages held by Palestinian militants and the free flow of much-needed aid.

Tedros, who also condemned an attack on the WHO’s main warehouse in Deir al-Balah, echoed that call.

“A ceasefire is not just necessary, it is overdue,” he wrote on social media.

Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Saar condemned the joint statement, saying that any international pressure should be on Hamas, while US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee called the joint statement “disgusting.”

Key mediator Egypt endorsed the message.

The Western plea came with Deir al-Balah under intense shelling on Monday, after Israel’s military the day before had ordered residents to leave, warning of imminent action in an area where it had not previously operated.

In their statement, the Western nations also denounced Israel’s aid delivery model in Gaza, saying it was “dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity.”

The UN has recorded 875 people killed in Gaza while trying to get food since late May, when Israel began easing a more than two-month aid blockade.

“We condemn the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food,” the joint statement said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned through his spokesman the “accelerating breakdown of humanitarian conditions,” noting “the growing reports of children and adults suffering from malnutrition.”

Since the start of the war, nearly all of Gaza’s population has been displaced at least once by repeated Israeli evacuation orders.

The latest order means that 87.8 percent of the territory is now under evacuation orders or within Israeli militarized zones.

Mai Elawawda, communications officer in Gaza for the UK-based charity Medical Aid for Palestinians, said the situation was “extremely critical,” describing shelling “all around our office.”

The families of hostages held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 2023 attack on Israel said they were “shocked and alarmed” by reports of evacuation orders for parts of Deir al-Balah.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum demanded political and military authorities “clearly explain why the offensive in the Deir al-Balah area does not put the hostages at serious risk.”

Of the 251 hostages taken during Hamas’ attack, 49 are still being held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.