UN says malnutrition in Gaza has doubled as Israeli strikes kill more than 90
It comes as new Israeli strikes killed more than 90 Palestinians, including dozens of women and children, according to health officials.
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Hunger has been rising among Gaza's more than two million Palestinians since Israel broke a ceasefire in March to resume the war and banned all food and other supplies from entering Gaza, saying it aimed to pressure Hamas to release hostages.
Palestinians struggle to get donated food at a community kitchen in Gaza City, northern Gaza Strip (Jehad Alshrafi/AP)
It slightly eased the blockade in late May, allowing in a trickle of aid.
UNRWA, the main UN agency caring for Palestinians in Gaza, said it had screened nearly 16,000 children under age five at its clinics in June and found 10.2% of them were acutely malnourished.
By comparison, in March, 5.5% of the nearly 15,000 children it screened were malnourished.
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– New airstrikes kill several families
One strike in the northern Shati refugee camp killed a 68-year-old Hamas member of the Palestinian legislature, as well as a man and a woman and their six children who were sheltering in the same building, according to officials from the heavily damaged Shifa Hospital, where the casualties were taken.
One of the deadliest strikes hit a house in Gaza City's Tel al-Hawa district on Monday evening and killed 19 members of the family living inside, according to Shifa Hospital.
The dead included eight women and six children.
A strike on a tent housing displaced people in the same district killed a man and a woman and their two children.
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There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the strikes.
Gaza's Health Ministry said in a daily report on Tuesday afternoon that the bodies of 93 people killed by Israeli strikes had been brought to hospitals in Gaza over the past 24 hours, along with 278 wounded.
It did not specify the total number of women and children among the dead.
Smoke and dust from an Israeli bombardment of the northern Gaza Strip rises over buildings near the Israel-Gaza border (Maya Alleruzzo/AP)
The Hamas politician killed in a strike early on Tuesday, Mohammed Faraj al-Ghoul, was a member of the bloc of representatives from the group that won seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council in the last national elections, held in 2006.
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The Israeli military says it only targets militants and tries to avoid harming civilians.
It blames civilian deaths on Hamas because the militants operate in densely populated areas.
But daily, it hits homes and shelters where people are living without warning or explanation of the target.
– Malnutrition grows
Unicef, which screens children separately from Unrwa, has also reported a marked increase in malnutrition cases.
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It said this week its clinics had documented 5,870 cases of malnutrition among children in June, the fourth straight month of increases and more than double the around 2,000 cases it documented in February.
Experts have warned of famine since Israel tightened its long-running blockade in March.
Israel has allowed an average of 69 trucks a day carrying supplies, including food, since it eased the blockade in May, according to the latest figures from Cogat, the Israeli military agency in charge of co-ordinating aid.
That is far below the hundreds of trucks a day the UN says are needed to sustain Gaza's population.
On Tuesday, Cogat blamed the UN for failing to distribute aid, saying in a post on X that thousands of pallets of supplies were inside Gaza waiting to be picked up by UN trucks.
Palestinians wait for donated food at a community kitchen in Gaza City (Jehad Alshrafi/AP)
The UN says it has struggled to pick up and distribute aid because of Israeli military restrictions on its movements and the breakdown in law and order.
Israel has also let in food for distribution by an American contractor, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
GHF says it has distributed food boxes with the equivalent of more than 70 million meals since late May at the four centres it runs in the Rafah area of southern Gaza and in central Gaza.
More than 840 Palestinians have been killed and more than 5,600 others wounded in shootings as they walk for hours trying to reach the GHF centres, according to the Health Ministry.
Witnesses say Israeli forces open fire with barrages of live ammunition to control crowds on the roads to the GHF centres, which are located in military-controlled zones.
The military says it has fired warning shots at people it says have approached its forces in a suspicious manner.
GHF says no shootings have taken place in or immediately around its distribution sites.
– No breakthrough in ceasefire efforts
The latest attacks came after US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held two days of talks last week that ended with no sign of a breakthrough in negotiations over a ceasefire and hostage release.
Israel has killed more than 58,400 Palestinians and wounded more than 139,000 others in its retaliation campaign since Hamas' October 7 2023, attack, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.
Just over half the dead are women and children, according to the ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its tally.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas after its attack 21 months ago, in which militants stormed into southern Israel and killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians.
They abducted 251 others, and the militants are still holding 50 hostages, less than half of them believed to be alive.
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Rhyl Journal
4 hours ago
- Rhyl Journal
At least 20 Palestinians die in stampede at food distribution centre
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North Wales Chronicle
4 hours ago
- North Wales Chronicle
At least 20 Palestinians die in stampede at food distribution centre
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Sky News
5 hours ago
- Sky News
Deadly crush at Gaza aid site after new system implemented
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Crush will add to criticism of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation Lisa Holland, Sky Correspondent in Jerusalem The United Nations has already condemned the aid centres run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as 'death traps' – and that was before the latest loss of life in which 21 people died seemingly mostly from suffocation. It's the first and only time we know of people dying in this way waiting to get food. Although the Gaza Health Ministry and the GHF dispute exactly what happened. But how much longer can this Israeli and American backed way to supply aid continue when people are dying on a near daily basis? However it happened Gaza's over-crowded hospitals are once again overwhelmed. And there are serious questions to answer about the organisation of a system which is supposed to be providing humanitarian aid to desperately hungry people - but instead is a place where there is so much loss of life. It leaves people with an unbearable choice between risking their lives to get supplies or going hungry. Chaos of the system A Palestinian former employee of GHF told Sky News that he had quit the organisation last month because of its failure to improve its systems. "The reason I left the organisation is because they did not take into account the suggestion of doing pre-registration like other organisations so that there is a fair and honest system for the crowds," he says. "It should be done by ID card," says Ahmed. "It is not fair for a person to be coming every day, selling the food and keep stealing again. I went almost 20 times and not once did I get a box because I can't run." A GHF spokesperson said: "Today's incident is part of a larger pattern of Hamas trying to undermine and ultimately end GHF." In a written statement, the Hamas-run Government Media Office denied the allegations, saying that GHF "vainly seeks to evade responsibility for one of the most heinous organised massacres committed against the starving in Gaza since the start of the genocide". Rising number of GHF casualties A total of 674 people have been killed while trying to collect food from GHF sites, according to the UN. These numbers do not include the latest casualties from Wednesday's incident. Sky News analysis has found that deaths across the Gaza Strip as a whole increase significantly on days when more GHF sites are open. "We have no more beds to put patients on - we're putting patients on the ground," says Dr Muhammad Saqr at Nasser hospital. "We can no longer deal with any more casualties coming from GHF or other centres." 0:14
