A wounded Palestinian woman cries as she holds the hand of her dead relative outside her home following Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City. AP

The head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) called for a ceasefire and a "true solution" to the Israel-Palestinian conflict in an emotional plea to the global health body's governing body on Thursday where he described conditions in Gaza as "hellish."

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who lived through war as a child and whose own children hid in a bunker during bombardments in Ethiopia's 1998-2000 border war with Eritrea, became emotional describing conditions in the bombed-out Gaza enclave where more than 25,000 people have been killed.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus speaks during an event. File

"I'm a true believer because of my own experience that war doesn't bring solution, except more war, more hatred, more agony, more destruction. So let's choose peace and resolve this issue politically," Tedros told the WHO Executive Board in Geneva during a discussion about the Gaza health emergency.

"I think all of you have said the two-state solution and so on, and hope this war will end and move into a true solution," he said, before breaking down, describing the current situation as "beyond words."

In the same address, Tedros warned that more people in Gaza would die of starvation and disease. "If you add all that, I think it's not easy to understand how hellish the situation is," he said.

Reuters