At least 80 children are among 101 Palestinians who have died of starvation or malnutrition in Gaza since the war erupted, according to the enclave’s hospitals.
Israeli forces have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians as they were trying to access food in Gaza since the United States- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began operations at the end of May, according to the United Nations.
“As of July 21, we have recorded 1,054 people killed in Gaza while trying to get food; 766 of them were killed in the vicinity of GHF sites and 288 near UN and other humanitarian organisations’ aid convoys,” UN human rights office spokesman Thameen Al-Kheetan told the AFP news agency on Tuesday, stating the victims had been “killed by the Israeli military”.
On Tuesday alone, Israeli forces killed at least 43 Palestinians, including 10 aid seekers, in attacks across Gaza since dawn, a day after tanks pushed into southern and eastern parts of central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah city for the first time.
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and humanitarian blockade, which it only partially lifted in March, continues to plunge the Palestinian territory into an increasingly dire malnutrition crisis as at least 15 people, including four children, have died due to starvation and malnutrition in Gaza within 24 hours, the enclave’s Ministry of Health said on Tuesday.
One was a child from Khan Younis in southern Gaza, and another was a 40-day-old baby in the north, according to our colleagues at media Arabic. Over the past three days, 21 children have died from malnutrition and starvation, the team reported.
“These deaths were recorded at hospitals in Gaza, including al-Shifa in Gaza City, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah and Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis … over the past 72 hours,” Mohammed Abu Salmiya, head of al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest, told reporters on Tuesday.
This brings the total number of hunger-related deaths in the Gaza Strip to 101, including 80 children, since Israel launched its war on the enclave after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attacks on southern Israel.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said more than one million children in Gaza are going hungry.
Rachel Cummings, Save the Children’s humanitarian director, described the situation in Gaza as “catastrophic”.
Speaking to media from Deir el-Balah, she said there has been no adequate food supplies in Gaza for a very long time.
The markets are empty, and the water sanitation situation is not adequate to meet the needs of 2 million people “who are all on the brink of famine”, Cummings said.
She said that in Deir el-Balah, she has seen “hungry people, children carrying empty bowls, looking for food, looking for water”.
“We’re seeing an increased number of children in our clinics and our nutrition centres who are malnourished. … We’re also seeing an increase in the number of pregnant women and breastfeeding women who are also malnourished,” she said, adding: “Everyone in Gaza is hungry now, and even in my team, I see visibly my team are thin, and also they cannot get food in the market.”
‘Man-made’ famine
Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, has called the starvation in Gaza a “man-made” famine.
“What we are seeing now in Gaza is the most horrific stage of Israel’s starvation campaign,” Fakhri told media.
The UN rapporteur underlined that the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in November for “crimes against humanity and war crimes” committed during the Gaza war – allegations that are partly related to the use of starvation.
He said the arrest warrants “create a legal obligation: Countries must act to stop starvation.”
Medical personnel are also affected by Israel’s starvation tactics as doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers in Gaza are “fainting due to hunger and exhaustion”, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said.
“Right now, I am seeing severe hunger and starvation amongst both my colleagues and my patients. … I see people that struggle to get through a day’s work because they don’t have the energy to do their normal duties,” said Deirdre Nunan, a Canadian orthopaedic surgeon, speaking from Nasser Hospital, where she is currently volunteering.
She added that she has seen people injured in Israeli air raids and attacks on their tents with severe multisystem injuries and burns who were malnourished and did not have the ability to “get the extra calories and protein that they would normally need to heal from this kind of injury and to survive it”.
Media personnel
The AFP journalists union has warned that its journalists working in Gaza are at risk of dying due to hunger.
One of its 10 freelancers posted a message on social media on July 19, saying: “I don’t have the strength to work for the media. My body is thin, and I can’t work.”
The AFP news agency warned that most of its workers in the Strip do not have the physical capacity to do their jobs any longer and the situation is worsening. “Their heartbreaking calls for help are now daily,” it said.
Despite the journalists receiving a monthly salary, there is either nothing to buy or food is available only at exorbitant prices, the union said. “We risk learning of their deaths at any moment, and this is unbearable for us.
“Since AFP was founded in August 1944, we have lost journalists in conflicts. We have had wounded and prisoners in our ranks, but none of us can remember seeing a colleague die of hunger. We refuse to see them die.”
