PARIS, Wednesday, November 8, 2023 (WAFA) – A coalition of 13 major aid groups, including Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Amnesty International and Oxfam, has urged world leaders to push for a ceasefire in Gaza after one month of brutal Israeli aggression against it.

The groups, in a statement issued a day before a humanitarian conference on Gaza is due to be held in Paris, called on French President Emmanuel Macron and heads of state to do everything in their power to obtain an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

Other priorities should include concrete measures to protect all civilian populations, guarantee entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and respecting international humanitarian law, the groups said.

In addition to MSF, Amnesty, and Oxfam, the signatories also included Action Against Hunger, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), and the International Federation for Human Rights.

"We are getting increasingly desperate appeals for protection and aid from our humanitarian workers inside the locked-down Gaza Strip," NRC chief Jan Egeland said in the statement.

"It is unacceptable that there is still no humanitarian ceasefire, no humanitarian corridor, and no end to the suffocating siege" of the Strip, he added.

Thursday's humanitarian conference was put together in a rush on the margins of the annual Paris Peace Forum.

The conference aims to mobilize all partners and stakeholders to respond to the needs of people in Gaza, a Macron adviser told reporters Wednesday on condition of anonymity.

G7 foreign ministers meeting in Japan on Wednesday called for "humanitarian pauses and corridors" to protect civilians, but failed to call for a ceasefire.

T.R.