A senior U.N. official warned Wednesday that women and newborns in Gaza are facing starvation, soaring deaths and a total collapse of maternal health care, describing the situation as “like a dystopian film.”
"In Gaza, I was not fully prepared for what I saw – one cannot be. The sheer extent of the devastation looked like the set of a dystopian film," said UNFPA Deputy Executive Director Andrew Saberton at a news conference on the situation with women and girls in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
"There is no other way to put it: Gaza has been flattened. Mile upon mile of rubble and dust, with few buildings left intact. I cannot unsee what I have seen," he added.
He also reported that displaced families in Gaza are sheltering "in half-destroyed buildings, or ragtag tents by the side of the road."
Warning that the hunger crisis in Gaza is deadly for mothers and infants, Saberton said, "One in four people is starving. That includes 11,500 pregnant women for whom starvation is particularly catastrophic."
