The foreign secretary has said the UK will do more to help injured children in Gaza if it can, following Sky News’ reporting on their plight.
David Lammy was on a whistlestop tour of the Arctic when we asked him about our story on a charity calling for the UK to offer children in Gaza life-saving treatment.
Israel-Gaza latest: Netanyahu reportedly accepts US ceasefire plan
He said: “The scale of the medical catastrophe for children and the population of Gaza is horrendous, and that’s why we increased our aid.
“What will end this suffering is a ceasefire but if there is more that we can do to end the suffering, of course, we will seek to do that.”
We read the foreign secretary the words of Doctor Victoria Rose, a British plastic surgeon working in Gaza.
Dr Rose had said: “Every time I come in, I say it’s bad, but this is on a completely different scale. It’s carnage… we really are on our knees now.”
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Call for government to save Gaza children
Mr Lammy was speaking as reports broke that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had accepted a ceasefire brokered by the Trump administration.
Hamas said on Thursday night that it was still discussing the deal, while an official warned that the Israeli response to the proposal failed to meet the group’s demands.
The foreign secretary said he hopes “we’re about to see a breakthrough that is not just a ceasefire for a few days, but is a sustained ceasefire that brings an end to some of the horrors that we are seeing out of Gaza and sees the return of the hostages”.
He was also sharply critical of the worsening situation in Gaza.
“The scenes of children dying, the horrors of people not being able to get aid are unacceptable, it’s horrendous,” he said.
Read more:
Charity calls on UK to help Gaza children
How the new Gaza aid rollout collapsed
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But Mr Lammy stopped short of saying Israel was guilty of a genocide – saying that was a decision for judges in international tribunals.
“We have always been clear that this is a decision for the international courts,” he said.
“I have to stand by our law, and I determined that there was a clear risk of a breach of international humanitarian law.”
The British government this month suspended trade talks with Mr Netanyahu’s government, in response to Israel ramping up its latest military offensive in Gaza and limiting aid to the enclave.
