One in three Palestinians in Gaza going days without food, says UNICEF
Gaza faces a grave risk of famine, with one in three people going days without food, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has warned.
UNICEF on Friday urged the international community to act swiftly as conditions continue to deteriorate due to Israel's genocidal war.
'Today, more than 320,000 young children are at risk of acute malnutrition,' Ted Chaiban, UNICEF's deputy executive director for humanitarian action and supply operations, said in a statement on Friday following a recent trip to Israel, Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
He said the malnutrition indicator in Gaza has 'exceeded the famine threshold'.
'Today, I want to keep the focus on Gaza, because it's in Gaza where the suffering is most acute and where children are dying at an unprecedented rate,' he said.
'We are at a crossroads, and the choices made now will determine whether tens of thousands of children live or die.' On Saturday, Atef Abu Khater, a 17-year-old Palestinian, died of malnutrition, a medical source at al-Shifa Hospital told Al Jazeera.
Earlier this week, Khater, who had been in good health before the war in Gaza, was hospitalised in intensive care, according to media reports, which quoted his father as saying he was no longer responding to treatment.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel's war on Gaza has killed at least 60,000 Palestinians, more than 18,000 of them children. Many more remain buried under the rubble, most presumed dead.
According to Gaza's Ministry of Health, the number of deaths from starvation in the territory stands at 162, including 92 children.
Ahmed al-Najjar, a journalist and resident of Gaza who is sheltering in Khan Younis, says Palestinians in the besieged territory are faced with 'tragedy and torment' amid Israeli bombardment, forced starvation and a complete feeling of insecurity.
'With the cats away, the mice will play – except that it's not just a mouse, but an engineered Israeli genocidal chaos,' he told Al Jazeera, stressing that safety is 'nowhere to be found' in Gaza.
'We are not just referring to the fact of constant fear of the Israeli bombs being dropped on our heads, but the fact that there is a total security and power vacuum that leaves us here unsure and uncertain of our own safety,' al-Najjar said.
He described that even walking in the street and going to buy a bag of flour or some other basic necessity makes people feel uncertain whether they will be able to return home safely.
'There is not any sort of presence of police or security forces in the streets; we've been seeing the continuous and systematic targeting of the police forces inside these 'safe zones' here.'
In March, Israel blocked food aid from entering Gaza. It eased the blockade in late May, after which the controversial Israel- and United States-backed GHF took over aid distribution in Gaza.
But GHF has been accused of grave rights violations and the targeting of civilians. The UN says more than 1,300 Palestinians have been killed trying to get food from the GHF's aid hubs.
Many have been purposefully shot by Israeli soldiers or US security contractors hired by GHF, according to testimonies from whistleblowers published in the media.
With starvation across the Strip spreading, international outcry over images of emaciated children and increasing reports of hunger-related deaths pressured Israel to let more aid into the Gaza Strip earlier this week.
The Israeli military last week began a daily 'tactical pause' of its military operations in parts of Gaza and established new aid corridors.
US President Donald Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, also travelled to Gaza on Friday to inspect the GHF aid distribution site, together with Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel.
The diplomats 'spent over five hours inside Gaza', Witkoff said in a post on X, accompanied by a photo of himself wearing a protective vest and meeting staff at a distribution site.
He added that the purpose of the trip was to 'help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza'.
Meanwhile, several Western and Arab governments began carrying out aid airdrops in Gaza earlier this week, to feed more than two million inhabitants. But aid agencies have said they are deeply sceptical that airdrops could deliver enough food safely to tackle a deepening hunger crisis in Gaza.
'Look, at this stage, every modality needs to be used, every gate, every route, every modality, but airdrops cannot replace the volume and the scale that convoys by road can achieve,' Chaiban said, adding that allowing about 500 humanitarian and commercial aid trucks into Gaza is important.
He also noted that what is happening on the ground is 'inhumane' and stressed that 'what children in Gaza need from all communities is a sustained ceasefire and a political way forward.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Qatar Tribune
an hour ago
- Qatar Tribune
31 killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza as hunger crisis grows
Agencies gaza At least 31 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip, medical sources said, and 20 others were killed when a truck carrying humanitarian aid overturned onto a crowd of people. Among those who died in Israeli attacks on Wednesday were 10 aid seekers killed in various areas of the territory, despite the Israeli army's announcement of 'tactical pauses' in fighting to allow aid distribution. Al-Awda Hospital reported that five people – including a woman and two children – were killed, and others wounded, in an Israeli raid on a house north of the Nuseirat refugee camp. Four more people died in an Israeli raid on two homes in the Shujayea neighbourhood of Gaza City. Earlier on Wednesday, at least 20 Palestinians were killed when a truck delivering aid supplies overturned, according to the Government Media Office. The incident occurred as large numbers of Palestinians gathered in central Gaza in search of food and basic supplies amid an increasingly dire humanitarian crisis. Local officials quoted by the official Palestinian news agency Wafa said the vehicle overturned after Israeli forces directed it down what they described as an 'unsafe road'. Gaza Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Bassal said dozens of people were wounded while hundreds of civilians were waiting for aid, the AFP news agency reported. 'Despite the recent limited allowance of a few aid trucks, the occupation deliberately obstructs the safe passage and distribution of this aid,' the Government Media Office said in a statement. 'It forces drivers to navigate routes overcrowded with starving civilians who have been waiting for weeks for the most basic necessities. This often results in desperate crowds swarming the trucks and forcibly seizing their contents.' The incident comes as humanitarian organisations warn of famine and disease spreading across the enclave, while deaths from starvation and malnutrition continue to rise amid severe Israeli restrictions on aid. Hunger crisis At least five people died from malnutrition on Wednesday, medical sources told Al Jazeera. A source at al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza confirmed that Hiba Yasser Abu Naji, a child, died from malnutrition. An infant also died from starvation, according to the source, and an adult from Jabalia was reported to have died as well. According to Gaza's Ministry of Health, at least 193 people – including 96 children – have died from starvation and malnutrition since October 2023. On Tuesday, the Israeli military allowed 85 aid trucks to enter Gaza – far below the 600 trucks a day needed to meet basic requirements, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). Meanwhile, Palestinians approaching aid distribution sites run by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) have frequently come under Israeli fire since the organisation launched operations in late May, after Israel slightly eased its total blockade. Such shootings have become near-daily occurrences near GHF sites in central and southern Gaza. 'Time is running out for people in Gaza, and a deal has to be reached between Hamas and the Israeli military that will allow for humanitarian aid to be let into the enclave,' Hisham Mhanna, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), told Al Jazeera. 'Everyone has suffered enough. We have lost colleagues, we have lost friends, families – everyone in Gaza is impacted,' he said.
Al Jazeera
5 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Wegovy maker Novo Nordisk warns of layoffs as competition grows
Novo Nordisk's outgoing CEO, Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen, has warned that layoffs at the Danish pharmaceutical giant could be unavoidable as competition heats up against its blockbuster obesity drug Wegovy amid rising pressure from rival Eli Lilly. Novo Nordisk – which became Europe's most valuable company, worth $650bn, last year on booming sales of Wegovy – is facing a pivotal moment as the medicine loses market share and sees sales growth slow, especially in the United States. It has warned of far slower growth this year, in part due to compounders who have been allowed to make copycat drugs based on the same ingredients as Wegovy due to shortages. Novo Nordisk, which according to its website has 77,000 employees, cut its full-year sales and profit forecasts last week, wiping $95bn off its market value since. The slide is a vast and abrupt turnaround for the firm that has been one of the world's hottest investment stories, which led to a rapid expansion of manufacturing and sales capacity. Now the company is eyeing potential cost-cutting measures. Layoffs loom 'We probably won't be able to avoid layoffs,' Jorgensen told Danish broadcaster DR. 'When you have to adjust a company, there are some areas where you have to have fewer people, some [areas] where you have to be smaller.' He added, though, that any decision on layoffs would be in the hands of the incoming CEO, company veteran Maziar Mike Doustdar, who takes over on Thursday. On a media call, Jorgensen said the market for copycat versions of Wegovy's class of drugs – known as GLP-1 receptor agonists – was of 'equal size to our business' and compounded versions of Wegovy were sold at a 'much lower price point'. In May, Novo Nordisk said it expected many of the roughly one million US patients using compounded GLP-1 drugs to switch to branded treatments after a US Food and Drug Administration ban on compounded copies of Wegovy took effect on May 22, and it expected compounding to wind down in the third quarter. However, finance chief Karsten Munk Knudsen said on Wednesday that more than one million US patients were still using compounded GLP-1s and that the company's lowered outlook has 'not assumed a reduction in compounding' this year. 'The obesity market is volatile,' Knudsen told analysts when asked under what circumstances the company could see negative growth in the last six months of the year. The low end of the firm's new full-year guidance range would be for 'unforeseen events', such as stronger pricing pressure in the US than forecast, he said. The lower end of the range would imply sales around 150 billion Danish krone ($23bn) in the second half of 2025, compared with 157 billion krone ($24.5bn) in the same period last year. Knudsen reiterated that the company was pursuing multiple strategies, including lawsuits against compounding pharmacies, to halt unlawful mass compounding. Jorgensen said the company was encouraged by the latest US prescription data for Wegovy. While the drug was overtaken earlier this year by rival Eli Lilly's Zepbound in terms of US prescriptions, that lead has narrowed in the past month. Second-quarter sales of Wegovy rose by 36 percent in the US and more than quadrupled in markets outside the US compared to a year ago, Novo Nordisk said. While Wegovy's US pricing held steady in the quarter, the company expected deeper erosion in the key US market in the second half, due to a greater portion of sales expected from the direct-to-consumer or cash-pay channel, as well as higher rebates and discounts to insurers, Knudsen said. He said Novo Nordisk was expanding its US direct-to-consumer platform, NovoCare, launched in March, and may need to pursue similar 'cash sales' directly to patients, outside of insurance channels, in some markets outside the US. Cost cuts Novo Nordisk reiterated its full-year earnings expectations on Wednesday after last week's profit warning. Jorgensen said the company was acting to 'ensure efficiencies in our cost base' as it announced it would terminate eight research and development projects. 'There seems to be a larger R&D clean-out than usual, but we do not know if this reflects a strategic re-assessment or just a coincidence,' Jefferies analysts said in a note. Investors have questioned whether the company can stay competitive in the booming weight-loss drug market. Several equity analysts have cut their price targets and recommendations on the stock since last week. Shares in Novo Nordisk plunged 30 percent last week – their worst weekly performance in over two decades. The stock has continued to tumble since the market opened in New York. As of 12pm local time (16:00 GMT), the pharmaceutical giant was down by more than 3.3 percent.
Al Jazeera
14 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
At least 20 Palestinians killed after aid truck overturns in central Gaza
At least 20 Palestinians have been killed and many injured after a truck carrying humanitarian aid overturned onto a crowd of people in central Gaza, according to the Government Media Office in the enclave. The incident occurred on Wednesday as large numbers of Palestinians gathered in central Gaza in search of food and basic supplies, amid an increasingly dire humanitarian crisis. Local officials quoted by the official Palestinian news agency Wafa said the vehicle overturned after Israeli forces directed it down what they described as an 'unsafe road'. Gaza Civil Defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that 20 people were killed and dozens were wounded in the incident while hundreds of civilians were waiting for aid, the AFP news agency reported. 'Despite the recent limited allowance of a few aid trucks, the occupation deliberately obstructs the safe passage and distribution of this aid,' the Gaza Government Media Office said in a statement. 'It forces drivers to navigate routes overcrowded with starving civilians who have been waiting for weeks for the most basic necessities. This often results in desperate crowds swarming the trucks and forcibly seizing their contents.' The incident comes as humanitarian organisations warn of famine and disease spreading across the enclave, while deaths from starvation and malnutrition continue to rise. At least three people died from malnutrition on Wednesday, medical sources told Al Jazeera. A source at al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza confirmed that Hiba Yasser Abu Naji, a child, died from malnutrition. An infant also died from malnutrition, according to the source. An adult from Jabalia was also reported to have died as a result of malnutrition. On Monday, the Israeli military permitted 95 aid trucks to enter Gaza – a figure far below the 600 trucks a day needed to meet basic requirements, according to UNRWA. The current daily average is 85 trucks. Meanwhile, Palestinians approaching aid distribution sites run by the notorious GHF have frequently come under Israeli fire since the organisation launched operations in late May. Such shootings have become near-daily occurrences near its sites in central and southern Gaza. Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for OCHA, said that while some aid was entering the enclave, 'there should be hundreds and hundreds of trucks entering Gaza every day for months or years to come. 'People are dying every day. This is a crisis on the brink of famine,' he said, adding that tonnes of life-saving aid remain stuck at border crossings due to bureaucratic delays and a lack of safe access. Elsewhere in Gaza, several Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks across the enclave. Al-Awda Hospital reported that five people – including a woman and two children – were killed, and others wounded, in an Israeli raid on a house north of the Nuseirat refugee camp. Four more people were killed in an Israeli raid on two homes in the Shujayea neighbourhood of Gaza City.
