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A top UN official has warned the deteriorating situation in Gaza is the worst humanitarian crisis he has ever seen in his 50-year career.

Speaking to Sky News’ Yalda Hakim, Martin Griffiths said it was because “people can’t escape. They’re blocked in, they’re not able to run out of Gaza“.

“I think this is the worst [crisis] in my 50 years of experience.”

The UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs said it was worse than “awful scenes” he witnessed during the civil war in Syria a few years ago and worse than the “horrors” that were the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in the 1970s.

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He compared the situation in Gaza with the current war in Sudan where “the suffering is quite likely on a similar scene” – but although eight million people have been displaced, one and a half million have left the country in northeast Africa.

“Now I’m not saying that’s a wonderful thing, but it’s a choice that they can make. This is not a choice that can be made in Gaza,” he said.

Since the war began on 7 October last year when Hamas launched its deadly attack on Israel, about 80% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes due to retaliatory Israeli strikes.

Large areas in northern Gaza have been completely destroyed, the majority of people have moved further south, and a humanitarian crisis has left a quarter of the population starving.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed Hamas gunmen are hiding in Rafah, on the southern Egyptian border, and is mulling launching a ground assault on the city.

In Rafah, 1.4 million people – over half the territory’s population – are crammed into tent camps and overflowing apartments and shelters in the city.

Mr Griffiths warned that if there was such a ground operation by Israeli forces, “please don’t think that a humanitarian operation can manage to help people in the way that we would like. It won’t.”

He added: “With a compression of over a million people into that pocket, down around Rafah, without any choice of them being able to go further south… we’re extremely worried about the lack of operating conditions for any kind of humanitarian operation.”

He also said: “We have huge problems of access. We have increasing episodes of civil disorder, which impede our access and attack our drivers.

“We’re having great difficulty getting aid into Gaza now. If Rafah was attacked and if Rafah closed, it would be even more difficult.”

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Speaking about the risk the whole of the territory faces, Mr Griffiths said: “We don’t think there is anywhere safe for people to move within Gaza. So the idea of evacuating them to some place of safety, we think is illusory.”

Hamas killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in its cross-border raid on Israel on 7 October and took around 250 others hostage. In retaliatory Israeli strikes, at least 28,576 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Mr Griffiths has negotiated with terrorists during his long career and he said Israel needs to negotiate an end to the war with Hamas, despite Mr Netanyahu vowing to destroy the militant group.

The UN official said: “I think it’s very, very difficult to dislodge these groups without a negotiated solution, which includes their aspirations.

“I cannot think of an example off-hand of a place where a victory through warfare has succeeded against a well-entrenched, group, terrorist or otherwise.”

Mr Griffiths added: “What I found is that the dialogue is a better instrument, even with terrorists to engage and solve or resolve differences.”

He also praised Sky News for its reporting of the civil war in Sudan, where rival military forces are fighting each other.

He said: “I’m really glad you’ve covered Sudan, I think that is exemplary and is wonderful that you’ve done so, because with international attention comes help for our operations, comes help for the people of Sudan.

“Sudan is a place where our absence of knowledge denies us a real sense of the extent of suffering, but the numbers tell the story.”

He said 25 million people need humanitarian assistance in Sudan, eight million people have left their homes, and there have been 10,000 cases of cholera.

“And barely any diplomacy. We need access.

“So we’ve been trying very hard to get the two militaries together, again, to engage in planning on our own access planning, convoy routes and so forth.”

The exchange of fire over Israel’s northern border with Lebanon is some of the most serious yet – but the situation remains fundamentally the same. 

Hezbollah’s Iranian patrons do not want the militia to escalate the conflict to an all-out war.

And its commanders want to avoid one too. Israel may be weighing a bigger war but has not decided to do so yet.

Ever since the Hamas atrocities of 7 October, Hezbollah and Israel have been duelling over the border.

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Hezbollah feels it must show solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza but not become drawn into a repeat of the devastating conflict of 2006.

It knows the people of Lebanon will not forgive them for any escalation that could wreck the country’s already decimated economy.

Hezbollah was set up with Iran’s encouragement to “resist” Israeli incursions and occupations and draws its ranks from the Shia of southern Lebanon. It is part of a crescent of Shiite militias stretching west from Iran.

Since 2006 its armoury of missiles hidden in the hills of southern Lebanon has increased to 150,000 rockets, according to Israel.

It is widely thought that Iran has paid for much of that to be used only as a last resort.

The arsenal is an insurance policy it is claimed only to be used when Israel or the United States strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.

For these reasons, it would take a major escalation to tip Hezbollah into an all-out war. That is not out of the question.

An accidental Israeli airstrike on a southern Lebanese kindergarten killing many children for instance might give Hezbollah commanders little choice but to respond in earnest.

And a deliberate Israeli escalation is also a possibility.

Since 7 October, Israel has been reevaluating a defence strategy that hitherto had preferred to manage the threat to its enemies rather than eliminate them.

It now favours the latter when it comes to Hamas. And some in the Israeli government have advocated the same against Hezbollah.

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Thus far Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears unconvinced.

So the uneasy status quo, however kinetic, remains ongoing. This latest exchange seems unlikely to change the equation.

Former Dutch international footballer and once a target of Manchester United, Quincy Promes, has been sentenced to six years in prison in absentia for drug trafficking.

Amsterdam District Court ruled that the 32-year-old – who plays in the Russian Premier League for Spartak Moscow – was involved in the import and export of hundreds of kilograms of cocaine in 2020.

Promes, who lives in Moscow, did not attend his trial in the Dutch capital and is not expected to return to the Netherlands in the foreseeable future.

Prosecutors had asked judges to sentence him to nine years for his involvement in the smuggling of 1,360kg of cocaine through the port of Antwerp in Belgium to the Netherlands in two shipments.

The court said phone-tapping showed Promes had been directly involved with the shipments of the drugs, hidden in shipments of salt from Brazil, and their further transport from the port.

In a written verdict, the court added that Promes got involved in the drug imports despite being a highly paid footballer with legions of fans and followers on social media.

“This makes it even more objectionable that the suspect tries to increase his wealth (and possibly also prestige in certain circles) through involvement in large international drug transports,” the court said.

Promes’s lawyers told judges he denied the allegations of importing, exporting, transporting and possessing the drugs.

They told Dutch newspaper AD the footballer would appeal his sentence.

In another Dutch court case, he was last year sentenced in absentia to 18 months in jail for assault, in connection with a fight in 2020 where he stabbed his cousin in the knee.

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Promes has also filed an appeal against that sentence.

The former Ajax and Sevilla forward made 50 appearances and scored seven times for the Dutch national side, but was struck from the team after he was charged with trafficking in 2021.