The United Nations said Israeli forces have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians trying to get food aid in Gaza since May, most of them were near the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) operation zones.
“More than 1,000 Palestinians have now been killed by the Israeli military while trying to get food in Gaza since the GHF started operating,” said the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the level of death and destruction witnessed in Gaza is unprecedented in recent times, undermining the most basic conditions of human dignity for the people of Gaza.
The head of Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City said yesterday that 21 children had died across the Palestinian territory in the past three days “due to malnutrition and starvation.”
Six-week-old Yousef’s lifeless body lay limp on a hospital table in Gaza City, his skin stretched over protruding ribs and a bandage where a drip had been inserted into his tiny arm. Doctors said the cause of death was starvation.
Doctors who say a wave of hunger that has loomed over the enclave for months is now finally crashing down.
Yousef’s family couldn’t find baby formula to feed him, said his uncle, Adham Al Safadi.
“You can’t get milk anywhere, and if you do find any it’s $100 for a tub,” he said, looking at his dead nephew.
Three of the other Palestinians who died of hunger were also children, including 13-year-old Abdulhamid Al Ghalban, who died in a hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis.
Israeli forces have killed nearly 60,000 Palestinians in air strikes, shelling and shooting since launching their assault on Gaza in response to attacks on Israel by the Hamas group that killed 1,200 people and captured 251 hostages in October 2023.
For the first time since the war began, Palestinian officials say dozens are now also dying of hunger.
Gaza has seen its food stocks run out since Israel cut off all supplies to the territory in March and then lifted that blockade in May with new measures it says are needed to prevent aid from being diverted to fighter groups.
At least 101 people are known to have died of hunger during the conflict, according to Palestinian officials, including 80 children, most of them in just the last few weeks.
Israel, which controls all supplies entering Gaza, denies it is responsible for shortages of food. Israel’s military said it “views the transfer of humanitarian aid into Gaza as a matter of utmost importance”, and works to facilitate its entry in co-ordination with the international community.
It has blamed the United Nations for failing to protect aid it says is stolen by Hamas and other fighters. The fighters deny stealing it.
Asked for comment, a White House official sided with Israel’s position that Hamas is to blame. The official said the US supports the GHF.
More than 1,000 people have been killed trying to reach food, mostly in mass shootings by Israeli soldiers posted near GHF distribution centres. The United Nations has rejected this system as inherently unsafe, and a violation of humanitarian neutrality principles needed to ensure that distribution succeeds.
Guterres called the situation for the 2.3 million residents of the Palestinian enclave a “horror show”.
“We are seeing the last gasp of a humanitarian system built on humanitarian principles,” Guterres told the UN Security Council. “That system is being denied the conditions to function.”
The Norwegian Refugee Council, which supported hundreds of thousands of Gazans in the first year of the war, said its aid stocks were now depleted and some of its own staff were starving.
“Our last tent, our last food parcel, our last relief items have been distributed. There is nothing left,” its director Jan Egeland told Reuters. “Israel is not yielding. They just want to paralyse our work,” he said.
The NRC says that for the last 145 days, it has not been able to get hundreds of truckloads of tents, water, sanitation, food and education materials into Gaza.
The NRC has 64 Palestinian and two international staff on the ground in Gaza. On Sunday the NRC had to move 33 of its staff out of Deir Al Balah following Israeli evacuation warnings.
The NRC said its supplies of safe drinking water are also running out, due to dwindling supplies of fuel to run desalination plants. The water has reached 100,000 people in central and northern parts of Gaza in recent weeks
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said yesterday that images of civilians killed during the distribution of aid were “unbearable” and urged Israel to deliver on pledges to improve the situation.
Yesterday, men and boys lugged sacks of flour past destroyed buildings and tarpaulins in Gaza City, grabbing what food they could from aid warehouses.
“We haven’t eaten for five days,” said Mohammed Jundia.
Israeli military statistics showed yesterday that an average of 146 trucks of aid per day had entered Gaza over the course of the war. The US has said a minimum of 600 trucks per day are needed to feed Gaza’s population.
“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,” said Khalil Al Deqran, a spokesperson for the health ministry.
Al 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.
Baby formula in particular is in critically short supply, according to aid groups, doctors and residents.
The health ministry said at least 72 Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire and military strikes in the past 24 hours, including 16 people living in tents in Gaza City. The Israeli military said it wasn’t aware of any incident or artillery in the area at that time.
Medics said tanks stationed north of Shati camp fired two shells at tents, housing displaced families, killing at least 16 people.
An Israeli official told Reuters there is about a half a million litres of fuel that the UN has been given approval to bring in.
“They’re bringing in fuel and collecting, but they can bring in and they can collect more, and we are having discussions with them,” the official said.
The official also said that there are about 700 trucks of unpacked aid on the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom crossing which have not been distributed.
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