“It was much, much worse than I’d anticipated”: UN aid chief horrified by sight of dogs feeding on corpses in Gaza
Tom Fletcher, head of the UN’s humanitarian affairs bureau, has described the scale of destruction in Gaza as far beyond his worst expectations, following a recent visit to the besieged territory.
“It was much, much worse than I’d anticipated, and I’d really prepared myself for the worst,” he told reporters, emphasizing the complete devastation across northern Gaza, where entire neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble.
“For miles and miles, it’s just rubble. My staff were trying to find a way back to their homes using GPS because there were no landmarks to navigate by. You couldn’t see what was a school, what was a hospital, what was a home.”
Among the most disturbing sights, Fletcher recounted seeing dogs scavenging through the ruins. “I said to my colleague, why are the dogs so fat? And he said, well, because the dogs are looking for corpses. And you notice that the people are thin, and then you see that for miles and miles and miles.”
Fletcher also urged Israel to lift its blockade on Gaza, warning that humanitarian supplies are at risk of running out “very, very fast.”
The lack of fuel, he stressed, is leading to dire consequences. “The fact that we’re not getting fuel in means that incubators are being switched off,” he warned.
