Medical NGO urges immediate Gaza aid to alleviate 'impossible' conditions

More humanitarian aid must be allowed into Gaza, where life is becoming "impossible" for the population, the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) charity has urged.

The organisation's president for France, Isabelle Defourny, said on Friday on her return from southern Gaza that aid deliveries needed to be "sufficient to address the emergencies" suffered by the civilian population there.

"We have said again and again that Gaza has become uninhabitable, but now it's actually becoming impossible to live there," she said.

More than two million people were living "virtually outdoors", she said, with only plastic sheets for cover.

"As cold weather approaches, this is going to go very badly," she said, adding that current humanitarian aid had been "in no way sufficient".

'Mass killing of civilians'

The comments came ahead of the first anniversary of Israel's brutal war on the besieged enclave.

Ongoing Israeli bombardments and the continuing destruction of infrastructure had left formerly busy transport routes in ruins, Defourny said.

MSF called on Israel to reopen the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt to allow aid and basic foodstuffs to get through, she said.

On Thursday, MSF had already reiterated its call for Israel to open "vital land borders" with Gaza.

In a statement, it also called for a "sustained ceasefire", and for an immediate end "to the mass killing of civilians".