Gaza devastation 'must stop now'

Ban pushed the international community to back the rebuilding in Gaza late Wednesday and provide humanitarian aid to the coastal enclave.

"Do we have to continue like this?" Ban said in an address to the General Assembly. "Build, destroy and build and destroy?"

"We will build again, but this must be the last time to rebuild," he said. "This must stop now. They must go back to the negotiating table."

Escaping 'walled off' life

President Obama said any peaceful solution must allow Gaza to escape its isolation.

"Long-term, there has to be a recognition that Gaza cannot sustain itself permanently closed off from the world and incapable of providing some opportunities - jobs, economic growth - for the population that lives there," he told reporters at the end of an Africa nations summit in Washington, while adding that Hamas was "extraordinarily irresponsible."

Obama said that ordinary Palestinians who live in the impoverished, war-ravaged Gaza need to "have some prospects for an opening of Gaza so that they do not feel walled off."

Robert Serry, the UN special envoy for the Middle East Peace Process, told the assembly in New York that the main issues have been identified but not yet implemented.

"The basic equation is: end the blockade on Gaza, address Israel's legitimate security needs," he said.

The truce in Gaza held for a second day on Wednesday while peace negotiations continued in Egypt. Israel indicated it was willing to extend the ceasefire past the original 72 hours agreed. However, Hamas' senior political leader based in Cairo, Moussa Abu Marzouk, wrote on Twitter that "there is no agreement" to prolong the ceasefire.

Gaza devastated

A month of airstrikes and shelling displaced over half a million people, about a third of Gaza's residents. The bombardment, which began June 8, killed 1,875 in Gaza, about 75 percent of them civilians.

The UN's deputy humanitarian chief, Kyung-wha Kang, said the United Nations and its partners appealed for $367 million to aid the 500,000 Gazans who "fled for their lives with nothing."

Kang said 65,000 people in Gaza have lost everything because their homes were destroyed. She described the "utter devastation" in which 144 schools or other facilities were damaged and said the public health system is "on the verge of collapse." Fourteen primary care facilities and 29 ambulances have been damaged, while more than 1 million of Gaza's 1.8 million residents have limited access to water and no electricity. Sewage backup also poses "a very serious risk" because of the risk of disease outbreak, she added.

UN human rights chief Navi Pillay told the assembly that "any attacks in violation of these principles, on civilians, homes, schools and hospitals, must be condemned, and may amount to war crimes."

dr/lw (AP, AFP, Reuters, dpa)