A top United Nations (UN) official claims that 14,000 babies could die in Gaza within the next 48 hours if they don’t receive humanitarian aid.

“This is not food that Hamas are going to steal,” said Tom Fletcher, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. “We run the risk of looting, we run the risks of being hit as part of the Israeli military offensive, we run all sorts of risks trying to get that baby food through to those mothers who cannot feed their children right now because they’re malnourished.”

When BBC reporter Anna Foster said the number of babies at risk is “extraordinary,” Fletcher responded, “It’s chilling. It’s utterly chilling.”

“But this is what we do,” he added. “We keep going. It will be frustrating. We will be impeded. We will run huge risks, but I don’t see a better idea than getting that baby food in to those moms who, at the moment, cannot feed their own kids.” 

Fletcher’s comments come one day after he reported Israeli authorities temporarily allowed a limited aid delivery to Gaza after an 11-week long blockade. 

“A drop in the ocean. It must reach the civilians who need it so urgently, and we must be allowed to scale up,” he wrote on X. “We are determined to save as many lives as we can.”

The urgency for aid falls amid a left-wing Israeli politician’s condemnation of Israeli’s assault on Gazan civilians and children. 

“Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state, like South Africa was, if we don’t return to acting like a sane country,” said Yair Golan, a former Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) deputy chief of staff, who is currently the head of the country’s Democratic Party.

“A sane country does not fight against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not give itself the aim of expelling populations,” he added during an interview with public broadcaster Kan on Tuesday.

Golan further described Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government as being “full of vengeful types with no morals and no ability to run a country in a time of crisis. This endangers our existence.”

Netanyahu subsequently condemned Golan’s comments, calling them a “wild incitement” in an X post. 

“The IDF is the most moral army in the world, and our soldiers are fighting in a battle for our very existence,” he said, according to an AI-generated English translation from Hebrew. “Golan, who has encouraged draft dodging and in the past, while in uniform, compared Israel to the Nazis, has now reached a new low by claiming that Israel ‘kills babies as a hobby.’”

“While we are conducting a multi-front war and leading complex diplomatic efforts to free our hostages and defeat Hamas, Golan and his allies in the radical left echo the most despicable antisemitic blood libels against IDF soldiers and the State of Israel,” Netanyahu added.

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), at least 15,600 children have been killed in the Gaza Strip, with thousands more injured, since the beginning of the war. 

“Nearly every child in Gaza knows what it is to be displaced: Their families have been torn apart, their homes destroyed,” the agency reports. “No child will emerge from the horrors of bombardment without the imprint of trauma.”