GAZA CITY:
The head of Gaza’s largest hospital on Tuesday said 21 children have died due to malnutrition and starvation in the Palestinian territory in the past three days, while Israel pressed a devastating assault.
Gaza’s population of more than two million people is facing severe shortages of food and other essentials, with residents frequently killed as they try to collect humanitarian aid at a handful of distribution points.
“Twenty-one children have died due to malnutrition and starvation in various areas across the Gaza Strip,” Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the director of Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza, told reporters.
Abu Salmiya told reporters that new cases of malnutrition and starvation were arriving at Gaza’s remaining functioning hospitals “every moment”.
“We are heading towards alarming numbers of deaths due to the starvation inflicted on the people of Gaza,” he added. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called Gaza a “horror show” in a speech on Tuesday, with “a level of death and destruction without parallel in recent times”.
After talks to extend a six-week ceasefire broke down, Israel imposed a full blockade on Gaza on March 2 this year, allowing nothing in until trucks were again permitted to enter at a trickle in late May.
However, stocks accumulated during the ceasefire have gradually depleted, leaving the territory’s inhabitants experiencing the worst shortages since the start of the war in October 2023.
Chaotic scenes have become frequent at aid distribution areas since the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation began overseeing aid operations. The UN on Tuesday said Israeli forces had killed over 1,000 Palestinians trying to get food aid since the GHF began its operations.
“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 AFP.
Earlier Tuesday, Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes had killed 15 people, after the World Health Organization said Israel attacked its facilities amid its expanding ground operations.
Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that Israeli strikes on the Al-Shati camp west of Gaza City had killed at least 13 people and wounded more than 50.
Most of Gaza’s population has been displaced at least once during the conflict and the Al-Shati camp — on the Mediterranean coast — hosts thousands of people displaced from the north in tents and makeshift shelters.
