Gaza destruction beyond anything I've ever witnessed, says ICRC boss

The director-general of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Friday that the destruction of Gaza was beyond anything he had witnessed in his three-decade long career.

“In the 25 or 30 years that I've been working in the humanitarian field, I have not seen that level of destruction,” Pierre Krahenbuhl told AFP.

“Not enough (aid) is coming into the Gaza Strip yet,” the ICRC official said. “What people need is, of course, far bigger than what we currently are able to deliver.”

The basic needs of Palestinians in Gaza are so immense “that what we are starting to do with improved humanitarian access is only the tip of the iceberg”, Krahenbuhl said.

The ICRC's director-general hit out at Israel's order this week banning the organisation from visiting Palestinians held under a law that allows for their indefinite detention.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said resuming the visits, which were suspended following the outbreak of Israel's genocide in Gaza, would “seriously harm the state's security”.

But there was “no way in which our visits can pose a security threat or a national security threat”, Krahenbuhl said, urging Israel to lift the ban.

In the interview with AFP, Krahenbuhl also said that humanitarian workers are being increasingly targeted in Gaza and in Sudan, where five Red Crescent volunteers were killed this week.

“It is now becoming a pattern of violence against humanitarian workers in Sudan, in Gaza, and others, that we find very dramatic,” he said.

On Tuesday, the ICRC said that five Sudanese Red Crescent volunteers were killed in North Kordofan state, where fighting is taking place between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), which have been at war since April 2023.