UNSC 'complicit in ongoing slaughter' in Gaza: Doctors Without Borders

The UN Security Council is "complicit in the ongoing slaughter" in Gaza and must vote to "lift the siege," the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres convened an emergency Security Council meeting after two months of fighting which has left more than 17,000 people dead in Gaza, according to the health ministry in Gaza.

MSF said the council must demand an immediate and sustained ceasefire and ensure unrestricted aid into the Palestinian territory.

"To date, the inaction of the United Nations Security Council and vetoes from member states, particularly the United States, make them complicit in the ongoing slaughter; this inaction has given license to the mass killing of men, women and children," MSF said in a statement on Friday.

Guterres deployed the rarely used Article 99 of the UN Charter, under which he can bring to the council's attention "any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security."

"History will judge the delay in ending this slaughter; basic humanity demands action," MSF said.

Insufficient aid

Israel's air and ground assault on Gaza has killed 17,487 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the besieged Palestinian territory.

"Temporary truces, humanitarian pauses, and the trickle of aid that has so far been allowed in, have been insultingly insufficient," said the Geneva-based MSF.

"The damage that has been done will require years of humanitarian support to alleviate; the scale of loss however, and the accompanying grief, may never be assuaged."

MSF said in Gaza's Al Aqsa hospital alone, 1,149 patients were received in the emergency ward from December 1 to 7, of which 350 were dead on arrival.

On Wednesday, "the hospital received more dead patients than injured," it said.

"People are desperate for food because of the cruel siege imposed on them. There needs to be some chance of survival; our doctors can do nothing for the dead," MSF International's secretary general Christopher Lockyear said.

"Failure to act now, to enact a total ceasefire and end the siege, would be unforgivable."

The UN says about 80 percent of the Gaza population has been displaced, facing dire shortages of food, fuel, water and medicine, and the growing threat of disease.

Guterres says he wants a "humanitarian ceasefire" to prevent "a catastrophe with potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians" and the entire Middle East.