The hunger crisis in Gaza: ‘Efforts not enough to counter current starvation'
The military announced the 'tactical pause' would remain in place between 10 am to 8 pm in densely populated areas, including Gaza City, Deir Al-Balah, and Muwasi, even as combat operations continued in the territory.
This comes after Gaza's two million people faced a near-total blockade on food, water, medicine, and electricity, leading to starvation, sickness, and deaths. Border closures and continuous airstrikes have, moreover, left shelves empty, hospitals overwhelmed, and families struggling to survive. Israeli strikes have killed at least 41 Palestinians between late Saturday and Sunday, including 26 of them while seeking aid, according to Gaza health officials.
Amid Israel's scale-up of aid, UN officials and aid workers warned that the measures fall far short of the much-needed ceasefire and unfettered aid access that could help stem the spiralling humanitarian catastrophe, as per UN News.
'Welcome announcement of humanitarian pauses in Gaza to allow our aid through,' UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher shared on X. 'This is progress, but vast amounts of aid are needed to stave off famine and a catastrophic health crisis,' he added. According to the UN, one in three people in Gaza hasn't eaten for days.
What does the 'tactical pause' entail?
Within the so-called 'tactical pause' announced by Israel late Saturday, its military began to airdrop aid into the Gaza Strip. The move came amid increased international pressure and increasing incidents of starvation-related deaths in Gaza.
The aid included seven packages of aid containing flour, sugar and canned food, the Israel Defence Forces stated over a Telegram post on Sunday.
The Israeli military also said on Saturday that it would establish humanitarian corridors for United Nations convoys, however, it refrained from providing further details.
The statement also emphasised 'that combat operations have not ceased' in Gaza against Hamas. It reiterated the IDF's position that there is 'no starvation' in the territory, as quoted by CBS News.
Following the announcement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said, 'Whichever path we choose, we will have to continue to allow the entry of minimal humanitarian supplies.'
On Saturday, Israel said that over 250 trucks carrying aid from the UN and other organizations entered Gaza this week. However, this is comparatively way less than the 600 trucks which entered Gaza per day when the ceasefire was in place until March 2025, CBS News stated.
The hunger crisis in Gaza
About 470,000 people are facing catastrophic hunger in Gaza, with 100,000 women and children suffering from severe acute malnutrition, who are in desperate need of treatment.
The WHO has warned malnutrition has reached 'alarming levels' in Gaza with rates on a 'dangerous trajectory' after aid air drops resumed to the Strip, BBC News reported. BBC also quoted the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry data which stated at least 133 people have died from malnutrition since the war began.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also denounced global inaction, calling the suffering in Gaza a 'moral crisis that challenges the global conscience.' 'We will continue to speak out. But words don't feed hungry children,' he wrote over a post on X.
'The @UN stands ready to make the most of a ceasefire to dramatically scale up humanitarian operations,' he added in his post last week.
US President Donald Trump too on Sunday called the images of emaciated and malnourished children in Gaza 'terrible.'
On July 23, more than 100 organisations, including Oxfam, sounded an alarm, urging governments to act: 'open all land crossings; restore the full flow of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items, and fuel through a principled, UN-led mechanism; end the siege, and agree to a ceasefire now,' a release by Oxfam International stated.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) also sounded the alarm, reporting that one in four children and pregnant or breastfeeding women screened at its Gaza clinics were malnourished. 'Rates of severe malnutrition in children under five have tripled in the last two weeks alone,' MSF said, blaming what it described as Israel's 'policy of starvation'.
Even before the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel that began from January 19 and lasted till March 18, there were famine-like conditions in pockets of Gaza as the amount of aid that was allowed to enter was pitiful compared to the needs. The ceasefire allowed international organisations and NGOs to scale up aid to the minimum required level, which helped stave off hunger in the initial days.
However, when the ceasefire collapsed and aid blockade began in March, the situation worsened, and continues to be projected as 'serious' and 'critical', as per the assessment of the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) which came out on the 12th that month.
Aid blockade: Beginning and end
The food crisis in Gaza intensified early March this year, when Israel completely cut off supplies of food, medicine, fuel, among others to the 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip, demanding Palestinian militant group Hamas to release all the remaining hostages. Currently, fifty of them remain in Gaza, with over half of them believed to be dead, as per an AP report.
Israel had restricted the entry of aid to Gaza claiming Hamas of siphoning it off to bolster its rule, however, it did not provide any evidence for the same, AP noted in its report.
The March aid blockade, which continued for two-and-a-half months began to push Gazans towards prolonged food shortages, illness, and death, as per the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Amid international pressure, Israel lifted the 11-week blockade in May, however, allowed only limited deliveries by the United Nations (UN) to resume.
Since then, Israel has allowed in around 4,500 trucks for the UN and other aid groups to distribute, including 2,500 tons of baby food and high-calorie special food for children, Israel's Foreign Ministry stated last week.
Meanwhile, the UN said that since then, the average of 69 trucks entering the Strip per day has been far below the 500 to 600 trucks, which is ideally needed. The UN also said it has been unable to distribute much aid because hunger-stricken crowds pick most of it from the trucks, AP quoted.
Role of US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation
A private humanitarian organisation backed by the United States and Israel was tasked with distributing humanitarian aid in Gaza soon after the aid blockade ended in May.
'We plan to scale rapidly to serve the full population in the weeks ahead,' the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation had then said in a statement after its director resigned, citing the organisation's lack of independence.
The UN called the GHF as a 'controversial' aid operation, with Guterres terming it as 'inherently unsafe.' 'It is killing people,' he had said. UN officials and Gaza-based doctors reported the killing of over 400 Palestinians as they tried to reach the four designated aid sites run by GHF.
The GHF rejected these numbers and said it was doing what other organisations could not, that is, delivering aid without it being looted or seized by Hamas. Israel supported the foundation as 'a mechanism to provide secure aid,' insisting its military did not 'deliberately target civilians collecting food,' as per a report in The Indian Express.
Even though Israel stands firm in its allegation that the UN system allows Hamas to steal aid, the global body has denied the same.
In a letter sent to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a group of Democratic senators Sunday expressed 'grave' concerns about 'the US role in and financial support for the troubled GHF,' urging the Trump administration to suspend American financial support for it, CBS News reported.
'We urge you to immediately cease all US funding for GHF and resume support for the existing UN-led aid coordination mechanisms with enhanced oversight to ensure that humanitarian aid reaches civilians in need,' the letter read.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot also told CBS on 'Face the Nation' that Gaza is on the 'brink of food catastrophe' and that France expected 'the Israeli government to stop the operations of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation that has caused [a] bloodbath in humanitarian health distribution lines in Gaza.'
Killed while seeking aid
Over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since May this year while trying to get food, mostly near those sites, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said.
According to a report by the AP, Awda Hospital in Nuseirat claimed Israeli forces recently killed at least 13 people, including four children and a woman, and wounded 101 as they headed toward a GHF aid distribution site in central Gaza.
To this claim, Israel's military said it fired warning shots to prevent a 'gathering of suspects' from approaching, hundreds of meters from the site before opening hours. GHF also asserted there were no such incidents at or near its sites, as per the report.
Thirteen others were killed seeking aid elsewhere, including northwestern Gaza City, where more than 50 people were wounded, and near the Zikim crossing where over 90 were wounded, hospital officials and medics told AP.
'Not enough to counter current starvation'
Israel's military late last week said about 28 aid packages containing food were airdropped, adding it would put in place secure routes for aid delivery, AP reported. It also said the steps were made in coordination with the UN and other humanitarian groups.
Meanwhile, the UN World Food Program stated that it had enough food in, or on its way, to feed all of Gaza for nearly three months, highlighting that nearly half a million people were enduring 'famine-like conditions'.
Antoine Renard, WFP's country director for the occupied Palestinian territories, said around 80 WFP trucks entered Gaza, while another over 130 trucks arrived via Jordan, Ashdod and Egypt. He said other aid was moving through the Kerem Shalom and Zikim crossings, AP report quoted.
However, he stressed it was not enough to counter the 'current starvation.'
In the month of July alone, Gaza saw 63 malnutrition-related deaths, which included 24 children under the age of five, as per WHO data. Israeli forces also forcibly displaced nearly two million Palestinians with the most recent mass displacement order issued on July 20, UN highlighted.
Amid the rising cases, Dr. Muneer al-Boursh, Gaza Health Ministry's director-general, called for medical supplies to treat child malnutrition. 'This (humanitarian) truce will mean nothing if it doesn't turn into a real opportunity to save lives,' he told AP. 'Every delay is measured by another funeral.'
Death toll and ceasefire talks
Since October 7, 2023, when Hamas began its attack on Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages, more than 59,700 Palestinians have been killed, according to latest numbers released by Gaza's Health Ministry.
Over half of those dead are women and children, AP reported quoting the ministry.
Ceasefire efforts, meanwhile, continue to remain failed. Israel and the US recalled negotiating teams from Qatar last Thursday, blaming Hamas, where Israel said it was considering 'alternative options' to talks.
Israel also said it was prepared to end the war if Hamas surrendered, disarmed and went into exile, which the latter refused. Khalil al-Hayya, the head of Hamas' negotiating delegation, said the group had displayed 'maximum flexibility.'
Senior Hamas official Mahmoud Merdawi also said Israel's change of approach on the humanitarian crisis amounted to an acknowledgement of Palestinians starving in Gaza, and asserted that it was meant to improve Israel's international standing and not save lives, as quoted in the AP report.
Support from other countries in delivering aid
Amid global condemnation of Israel's aid blockade in Gaza, leaders of the United Kingdom, France and Germany have called for lifting all the restrictions on aid and urged the countries in conflict to consider an immediate ceasefire.
UK prime minister Keir Starmer, speaking to French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz on Saturday, said that his government will be 'taking forward' plans to airdrop aid into Gaza, in collaboration with Jordan, and evacuate children who need medical assistance to the UK for treatment, according to a BBC report.
According to a spokesperson quoted by The Guardian, the three leaders agreed 'it would be vital to ensure robust plans are in place to turn an urgently needed ceasefire into lasting peace.' 'They discussed their intention to work closely together on a plan, building on their collaboration to date, which would pave the way to a long-term solution and security in the region.'
Moreover, as Israel agreed to let Jordan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) airdrop aid into Gaza, the UAE's foreign minister on Saturday said the country would resume aid drops over Gaza 'immediately' citing the 'critical' humanitarian situation, as per the report.
Jordan and the UAE said it delivered '25 tonnes of food aid and essential humanitarian supplies' by aid air drops, BBC News reported.
'The humanitarian situation in Gaza has reached a critical and unprecedented level,' Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan said in a post on X. 'We will ensure essential aid reaches those most in need, whether through land, air or sea. Air drops are resuming once more, immediately.'
Besides these countries, Egypt also delivered aid into Gaza by land and air.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
&w=3840&q=100)
First Post
7 hours ago
- First Post
After starvation, thirst grips Gaza: Aid workers say water crisis as severe as food shortage
In addition to the hunger crisis, Gaza is also in the grips of a severe water shortage. As the Israeli bombardment has destroyed most of Gaza's water supply and sanitation infrastructure, some small desalination units run by aid agencies are the only source of potable water, with most of the water used in Gaza drawn from wells in a brackish aquifer that has been further polluted by sewage and chemicals seeping through the rubble, spreading diarrhoea and hepatitis. read more Weakened by hunger, many Gazans trek across a ruined landscape each day to haul all their drinking and washing water — a painful load that is still far below the levels needed to keep people healthy. Even as global attention has turned to starvation in Gaza, where after 22 months of a devastating Israeli military campaign a global hunger monitor says a famine scenario is unfolding, the water crisis is just as severe according to aid groups. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Though some water comes from small desalination units run by aid agencies, most is drawn from wells in a brackish aquifer that has been further polluted by sewage and chemicals seeping through the rubble, spreading diarrhoea and hepatitis. COGAT, the Israeli military agency responsible for coordinating aid in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, says it operates two water pipelines into the Gaza Strip providing millions of litres of water a day. Palestinian water officials say these have not been working recently. Israel stopped all water and electricity supply to Gaza early in the war but resumed some supply later though the pipeline network in the territory has been badly damaged. Most water and sanitation infrastructure has been destroyed and pumps from the aquifer often rely on electricity from small generators — for which fuel is rarely available. COGAT said the Israeli military has allowed coordination with aid organisations to bring in equipment to maintain water infrastructure throughout the conflict. Moaz Mukhaimar, aged 23 and a university student before the war, said he has to walk about a kilometre, queuing for two hours, to fetch water. He often goes three times a day, dragging it back to the family tent over bumpy ground on a small metal handcart. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD 'How long will we have to stay like this?' he asked, pulling two larger canisters of very brackish water to use for cleaning and two smaller ones of cleaner water to drink. His mother, Umm Moaz, 53, said the water he collects is needed for the extended family of 20 people living in their small group of tents in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip. 'The children keep coming and going and it is hot. They keep wanting to drink. Who knows if tomorrow we will be able to fill up again,' she said. Their struggle for water is replicated across the tiny, crowded territory where nearly everybody is living in temporary shelters or tents without sewage or hygiene facilities and not enough water to drink, cook and wash as disease spreads. The United Nations says the minimum emergency level of water consumption per person is 15 litres a day for drinking, cooking, cleaning and washing. Average daily consumption in Israel is around 247 litres a day according to Israeli rights group B'Tselem. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Bushra Khalidi, humanitarian policy lead for aid agency Oxfam in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories said the average consumption in Gaza now was 3-5 litres a day. Oxfam said last week that preventable and treatable water-borne diseases were 'ripping through Gaza', with reported rates increasing by almost 150% over the past three months. Israel blames Hamas for the suffering in Gaza and says it provides adequate aid for the territory's 2.3 million inhabitants. Queues for water 'Water scarcity is definitely increasing very much each day and people are basically rationing between either they want to use water for drinking or they want to use a lot for hygiene,' said Danish Malik, a global water and sanitation official for the Norwegian Refugee Council. Merely queuing for water and carrying it now accounts for hours each day for many Gazans, often involving jostling with others for a place in the queue. Scuffles have sometimes broken out, Gazans say. Collecting water is often the job of children as their parents seek out food or other necessities. 'The children have lost their childhood and become carriers of plastic containers, running behind water vehicles or going far into remote areas to fill them for their families,' said Munther Salem, water resources head at the Gaza Water and Environment Quality Authority. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD With water so hard to get, many people living near the beach wash in the sea. A new water pipeline funded by the United Arab Emirates is planned, to serve 600,000 people in southern Gaza from a desalination plant in Egypt. But it could take several more weeks to be connected. Much more is needed, aid agencies say. UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said the long-term deprivations were becoming deadly. 'Starvation and dehydration are no longer side effects of this conflict. They are very much frontline effects.' Oxfam's Khalidi said a ceasefire and unfettered access for aid agencies was needed to resolve the crisis. 'Otherwise we will see people dying from the most preventable diseases in Gaza — which is already happening before our eyes.' (This is an agency copy. Except for the headline, the copy has not been edited by Firstpost staff.)
News18
7 hours ago
- News18
A young surgeon tries to save lives at crippled Gaza hospital
Agency: PTI Last Updated: Deir al-Balah (Gaza Strip), Aug 6 (AP) At Shifa hospital in the Gaza Strip, nothing is sterilised, so Dr Jamal Salha and other surgeons wash their instruments in soap. Infections are rampant. The stench of medical waste is overwhelming. And flies are everywhere. Without painkillers, patients moan while lying on metal beds lining the corridors. There's no electricity and no ventilation amid searing heat, leaving anxious visitors to fan bedridden relatives with pieces of cardboard. Shifa, once the largest hospital in Gaza and the cornerstone of its health care system, is a shell of its former self after 22 months of war. The hospital complex the size of seven soccer fields has been devastated by frequent bombings, two Israeli raids and blockades on food, medicine and equipment. Its exhausted staff works around the clock to save lives. 'It is so bad, no one can imagine," said Salha, a 27-year-old neurosurgeon who, like countless doctors in Gaza, trained at Shifa after medical school and hopes to end his career there. But the future is hard to think about when the present is all-consuming. Salha and other doctors are overwhelmed by a wartime caseload that shows no sign of easing. It has gotten more challenging in recent weeks as patients' bodies wither from rampant malnutrition. Shifa was initially part of a British military post when it opened in 1946. It developed over the years to boast Gaza's largest specialized surgery department, with over 21 operating rooms. Now, there are only three, and they barely function. Because Shifa's operating rooms are always full, surgeries are also performed in the emergency room, and some of the wounded must be turned away. Bombed-out buildings loom over a courtyard filled with patients and surrounded by mounds of rubble. Salha fled northern Gaza at the start of the war — and only returned to Shifa at the beginning of this year. While working at another extremely busy hospital in central Gaza, he kept tabs on Shifa's worsening condition. 'I had seen pictures," he said. 'But when I first got back, I didn't want to enter." A young doctor and a war After graduating from medical school in 2022, Salha spent a year training at Shifa. That is when he and a friend, Bilal, decided to specialize in neurosurgery. But everything changed on Oct 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel and Israel's retaliatory campaign began. For the first few weeks of the war, Salha was an intern at Shifa. Because Israel had cut off Gaza's internet service, one of Salha's jobs was to bring scans to doctors around the complex. He had to navigate through thousands of displaced people sheltering there and run up and down stairwells when elevators stopped working. Once Israeli troops moved into northern Gaza, he and has family left. Bilal, who stayed in Gaza City, was killed a few months later, Salha said. Not long after Salha left, Israeli forces raided Shifa for the first time in November 2023. Israel said the hospital served as a major Hamas command and control center. But it provided little evidence beyond a single tunnel with two small rooms under the facility. It made similar arguments when raiding and striking medical facilities across Gaza even as casualties from the war mounted. Israel says it makes every effort to deliver medical supplies and avoid harming civilians. Under international law, hospitals lose their protected status if they are used for military purposes. Hamas has denied using hospitals for military purposes, though its security personnel can often be seen inside them and they have placed parts of hospitals off limits to the public. Israeli forces returned to Shifa in March 2024, igniting two weeks of fighting in which the military said it killed some 200 militants who had regrouped there. The hospital was left in ruins. The World Health Organisation said three hospital buildings were extensively damaged and that its oxygen plant and most equipment were destroyed, including 14 baby incubators. While all this was going on, Salha worked at a hospital in central Gaza, where he performed over 200 surgeries and procedures, including dozens of operations on fractured skulls. Some surgeons spend a lifetime without ever seeing one. When he returned to Shifa as a neurosurgeon resident, the buildings he used to run between — some had been rehabilitated — felt haunted. 'They destroyed all our memories," he said. A shrunken hospital is stretched to its limits Shifa once had 700 beds. Today there are roughly 200, and nearly as many patients end up on mattresses on the floor, the hospital manager said. Some beds are set up in storage rooms, or in tents. An extra 100 beds, and an additional three surgery rooms, are rented out from a nearby facility. The hospital once employed 1,600 doctors and nurses. Now there about half as many, according to Shifa's administrative manager, Rami Mohana. With Gaza beset by extreme food insecurity, the hospital can no longer feed its staff, and many workers fled to help their families survive. Those who remain are rarely paid. On a recent morning, in a storage room-turned-patient ward, Salha checked up on Mosab al-Dibs, a 14-year-old boy suffering from a severe head injury and malnutrition. 'Look how bad things have gotten?" Salha said, pulling at al-Dibs' frail arm. Al-Dibs' mother, Shahinez, was despondent. 'We've known Shifa since we were kids, whoever goes to it will be cured," she said. 'Now anyone who goes to it is lost. There's no medicine, no serums. It's a hospital in name only." There are shortages of basic supplies, like gauze, so patients' bandages are changed infrequently. Gel foams that stop bleeding are rationed. Shifa's three CT scan machines were destroyed during Israeli raids, Mohana said, so patients are sent to another nearby hospital if they need one. Israel has not approved replacing the CT scanners, he said. Patients wait for hours — and sometimes days — as surgeons prioritize their caseload or as they arrange scans. Some patients have died while waiting, Salha said. After months without a pneumatic surgical drill to cut through bones, Shifa finally got one. But the blades were missing, and spare parts were not available, Salha said. 'So instead of 10 minutes, it could take over an hour just to cut the skull bones," he said. 'It leaves us exhausted and endangers the life of the patient." When asked by The Associated Press about equipment shortages at Shifa, the Israeli military agency in charge of aid coordination, COGAT, did not address the question. It said the military "consistently and continuously enables the continued functioning of medical services through aid organizations and the international community.? Unforgettable moments From his time at the hospital in central Gaza, Salha can't shake the memory of the woman in her 20s who arrived with a curable brain hemorrhage. The hospital wouldn't admit her because there were no beds available in the intensive care unit. He had wanted to take her in an ambulance to another hospital, but because of the danger of coming under Israeli attack, no technician would go with him to operate her ventilator. 'I had to tell her family that we will have to leave her to die," he said. Other stories have happier endings. When a girl bleeding from her head arrived at Shifa, Salha's colleague stopped it with his hand until a gel foam was secured. The girl, who had temporarily lost her vision, greeted Salha after her successful recovery. top videos View all 'Her vision was better than mine," the bespectacled Salha said, breaking a smile. 'Sometimes it seems we are living in a stupor. We deal with patients in our sleep and after a while, we wake up and ask: what just happened?" (AP) RD RD RD (This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed - PTI) view comments First Published: August 06, 2025, 18:45 IST News agency-feeds A young surgeon tries to save lives at crippled Gaza hospital Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
New Indian Express
a day ago
- New Indian Express
Gaza civil defence says Israeli attacks kill 26
Gaza's civil defence agency said 26 people were killed by Israeli gunfire and air strikes on Tuesday, including 14 who were waiting near an aid distribution site inside the Palestinian territory. Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that eight people were killed by Israeli gunfire while waiting for aid near the south Gaza city of Khan Yunis. Six more people were killed and 21 injured by Israeli fire in central Gaza while waiting for food near a distribution centre, according to Bassal. The Israeli army told AFP it was looking into the incidents. Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by the civil defence agency and other parties. Thousands of Gazans gather daily near food distribution points across Gaza, including four belonging to the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Its operations have been marred by chaotic scenes and near-daily reports of Israeli forces firing on those waiting to collect rations. Israeli restrictions on the entry of goods and aid into Gaza since the start of the war nearly 22 months ago have led to shortages of food and essential goods, including medicine, medical supplies and fuel, which hospitals rely on to power their generators. Bassal said that five people were killed by a nightly air strike on a tent in Al-Mawasi in south Gaza, an area Israeli authorities designated as a safe zone early on in the war.
