Starvation grips Gaza: Pope calls for sufficient humanitarian aid, end to hostilities

Vatican City: Pope Leo XIV called on Wednesday for sufficient humanitarian aid to be allowed into war ravaged Gaza, where humanitarian agencies say a...

Vatican City: Pope Leo XIV called on Wednesday for sufficient humanitarian aid to be allowed into war-ravaged Gaza, where humanitarian agencies say a total blockade has sparked critical food and medicine shortages.

"The situation in the Gaza Strip is worrying and painful," the pope said during his first weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square.

"I renew my heartfelt appeal to allow the entry of sufficient humanitarian aid and to put an end to the hostilities, the heartbreaking price of which is paid by children, the elderly, the sick," he said.

Leo, who was elected on May 8 to be the Catholic Church's first US pope, has made peace a theme of his papacy so far, calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.

Israel has come under massive international pressure to abandon its intensified military campaign in Gaza and allow urgent humanitarian aid into the besieged strip.