By Staff Reporter
Latest starvation deaths take overall toll to 101 as UN says doctors, aid workers are also fainting on the job from hunger and exhaustion.
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At least 15 Palestinians, including four children, have starved to death in a single day in the besieged Gaza Strip, according to health officials, bringing the total number of deaths from malnutrition since Israel’s war began to 101.
The announcement on Tuesday came as Israeli forces continued to pound Gaza, killing at least 81 people, and the United Nations described the situation in the enclave as a “horror show with a level of death and destruction without parallel in recent times”.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health said that the 15 starvation-related deaths over the past 24 hours included four children and that the overall toll of 101 included 80 children.
Most of the deaths have come in the last few weeks.
Among the children who died on Tuesday were six-week-old Yousef al-Safadi, who passed away at a hospital in northern Gaza City, and 13-year-old Abdulhamid al-Ghalban, who died in another medical facility in southern Khan Younis, according to doctors.
Yousef’s uncle, Adham al-Safadi, told the Reuters news agency that the infant’s mother had not been able to breastfeed because she was not eating and the family could not find baby formula to feed him.
“You can’t get milk anywhere, and if you do find any, it’s $100 for a tub,” al-Safadi told Reuters. “The mother can’t breastfeed. There’s no food and drinks, so there is no breastmilk. The baby died of malnutrition.”
The starvation crisis comes amid a nearly five-month blockade by Israel on food, fuel, water and other humanitarian supplies entering the Gaza. Israel cut off all goods from entering the territory in March, but has allowed in a trickle of aid starting in May, mostly through the controversial United States-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
According to the UN, Israeli forces have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians seeking food aid since the GHF began its operations, most of them near the group’s distribution points.
The 81 Palestinians killed on Tuesday include at least 31 aid seekers, according to medics in Gaza.
Fifteen others were killed in an Israeli attack on a building housing displaced people in northern Gaza City, according to a source at al-Shifa Hospital, while 13 more were killed and 50 others wounded in a strike on the nearby Shati refugee camp, according to the Palestinian Civil Defence.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, speaking at the Security Council, highlighted the “horror show” for the 2.3 million Palestinians in the enclave.
“Malnourishment is soaring, starvation is knocking on every door, and now we are seeing the last gasp of a humanitarian system built on humanitarian principles,” he said. “This system is being denied the space to function, denied the space to deliver, denied the safety to save lives.”
Guterres said that Israel has intensified military operations in Gaza, including by issuing new forced displacement orders in parts of central Deir el-Balah, a city that was considered the last remotely safe area in the Strip.
According to UN figures, nearly 88 percent of the entire Gaza Strip is now within Israeli militarised zones or under displacement orders, forcing the population into an ever-shrinking space.
Guterres said the latest order was layering devastation “upon devastation”.
Staff fainting on duty
Doctors in Gaza, meanwhile, said they are seeing increasing numbers of malnourished people arriving at their hospitals.
Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the director of al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza, told reporters that there could be “alarming numbers” of deaths due to starvation.
Khalil al-Daqran, the spokesperson for Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza, said doctors are not able to help those suffering from malnutrition.
“Hospitals are already overwhelmed by the number of casualties from gunfire. They can’t provide much more help for hunger-related symptoms because of food and medicine shortages,” he said.
Deqran said some 600,000 people were suffering from malnutrition, including at least 60,000 pregnant women. Symptoms among those going hungry include dehydration and anaemia, he said.
Healthcare workers and humanitarian staff in Gaza were also reporting fainting on the job because of the hunger and exhaustion, according to officials.
“No one is spared: caretakers in Gaza are also in need of care,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, wrote on X. “Doctors, nurses, journalists & humanitarians are hungry. Many are now fainting due to hunger & exhaustion while performing their duties: reporting atrocities or alleviating some of the suffering.”
Lazzarini went on to say that seeking food in Gaza has become as deadly as the Israeli bombardments and denounced the GHF schemes as “a sadistic death trap”.
“Snipers open fire randomly on crowds as if they are given a licence to kill. A massive hunt of people, in total impunity. This cannot be our new norm, humanitarian assistance is not the job of mercenaries,” he said.
The Norwegian Refugee Council, one of the largest independent aid organisations in Gaza, also said its staff in the enclave were starving.
“Our last tent, our last food parcel, our last relief items have been distributed. There is nothing left,” Jan Egeland, the secretary-general of the NRC, told Reuters.
“Hundreds of truckloads have been sitting in warehouses or in Egypt or elsewhere, and costing our Western European donors a lot of money, but they are blocked from coming in,” Egeland said.
“Israel is not yielding. They just want to paralyse our work,” he added.
Israel denies targeting civilians and rejects responsibility for the shortages of food in Gaza. The GHF has also rejected what it said were “false and exaggerated statistics” from the UN about the killings at its aid sites.
Assault on Deir el-Balah
Humanitarian groups also say that Israel’s military operations in central Deir el-Balah, which is the main hub for aid efforts, have compromised their ability to operate in the Strip.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the secretary-general of the World Health Organization, said on X that the agency’s staff residence was attacked three times during the Israeli assault, while its main warehouse was damaged.
Israeli troops entered the residence, forced women and children to evacuate, and handcuffed and stripped male staff and family members.
Four staff were detained, and one remains in Israeli custody, he said.
“WHO demands the immediate release of the detained staff and protection of all its staff,” Tedros wrote. “With the main warehouse nonfunctional and the majority of medical supplies in Gaza depleted, WHO is severely constrained in adequately supporting hospitals, emergency medical teams and health partners, already critically short on medicines, fuel, and equipment,” he added.
While the Israeli military has claimed its operation in the area is now over, Palestinians living there have not been able to return.
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Deir el-Balah, said residents were afraid to go back to their homes “as they are in the firing line of heavy artillery”. He said that “quadcopters and surveillance drones also hover over the area, creating an atmosphere of intimidation and fear”.
Israel’s war on Gaza – which began after the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023 – has killed at least 59,106 Palestinians and wounded 142,511. Most of the victims are women and children.
The killings and destruction come as ceasefire talks between Hamas and Israel remain stalled.
The two sides have been holding indirect talks in Qatar on a US proposal for a 60-day ceasefire, during which Hamas would release more of the Israelis it took captive in the October 7 attacks, while Israel would free Palestinian prisoners and allow a surge of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
While there has been some progress, officials say a main sticking point is the redeployment of Israeli troops after any ceasefire takes place.
In a statement, Hamas called on Arab nations to break their ties with Israel over its “systematic genocide and criminal starvation” in the enclave.
“We affirm that the official responses and positions do not rise to the level of the catastrophe facing two and a quarter million people. The deafening silence of our nation’s rulers encourages war criminal Netanyahu to pursue his policy of starvation and genocide,” the Palestinian group said.
“Our people are starving while thousands of aid trucks are piling up on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing. We call on Arab and Islamic countries to sever all ties with the fascist occupation entity and expel Zionist ambassadors,” it added.
Source: Al Jazeera
