Israel launches ground assault in Gaza's Deir Al-Balah for the first time
There was no immediate Israeli comment on the Deir Al-Balah and Khan Younis incidents.
Israel's military said it had not entered the districts of Deir Al-Balah subject to the evacuation order during the current conflict and that it was continuing "to operate with great force to destroy the enemy's capabilities and terrorist infrastructure in the area." Israeli sources have said the reason the army has so far stayed out is that they suspect Hamas might be holding hostages there. At least 20 of the remaining 50 hostages in captivity in Gaza are believed to be still alive.
Families of the hostages expressed their concern for their relatives and demanded an explanation from the army of how it would protect them.
The military escalation comes as Gaza health officials warned of potential "mass deaths" in the coming days due to mounting hunger, which has killed at least 19 people since Saturday, according to the territory's health ministry. Health officials said hospitals were running out of fuel, food aid, and medicine, risking a halt to vital operations. Israel's military said its troops had fired warning shots towards a crowd of thousands of people in northern Gaza to remove what it said was "an immediate threat."
It said initial findings suggested reported casualty figures were inflated, and it "certainly does not intentionally target humanitarian aid trucks."
The new raid and escalating number of fatalities appeared to be complicating ceasefire talks between Hamas and Israel that are being mediated by Qatar and Egypt, with US backing. UNRWA, the UN refugee agency dedicated to Palestinians, said in a post on X on Monday, it was receiving desperate messages from Gaza warning of starvation, including from its own staff as food prices have increased 40-fold. "Meanwhile, just outside Gaza, stockpiled in warehouses, UNRWA has enough food for the entire population for over three months. Lift the siege and let aid in safely and at scale," it said. Israel's military said on Sunday that it "views the transfer of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip as a matter of utmost importance, and works to enable and facilitate its entry in coordination with the international community."
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News.com.au
5 hours ago
- News.com.au
World Health Organisation chief says Gaza is suffering ‘man-made mass starvation'
Gaza is suffering 'man-made mass starvation' caused by the blockade of aid, the head of the World Health Organisation has said, as Israel hits back at growing international criticism that it was behind chronic food shortages in the territory. 'I don't know what you would call it other than mass starvation, and it's man-made, and that's very clear,' Tedros Adhanom Ghebreysus told reporters during a virtual press conference from Geneva. 'This is because of (the) blockade.' At least 10 people have died due to malnutrition and starvation in the last 24 hours, Gazan authorities report, bringing the death toll caused by the crisis to 111, 80 of them children. A quarter of the territory's population is now facing famine-like conditions, according to World Health Organisation (WHO) assessments, and close to 100,000 women and children are experiencing severe acute malnutrition. 'Rates of acute malnutrition exceed 10 per cent, and over 20 per cent of pregnant and breastfeeding women that have been screened are malnourished, often severely,' Dr Ghebreysus said. 'The hunger crisis is being accelerated by the collapse of aid pipelines and restrictions on access (with) 95 per cent of households in Gaza facing severe water shortages.' His comments followed a letter signed by 109 global aid and human rights agencies – including Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam International and Amnesty International – warned that civilians and their colleagues are 'wasting away'. 'As the Israeli government's siege starves the people of Gaza, aid workers are now joining the same food lines, risking being shot just to feed their families,' the statement read. 'With supplies now totally depleted, humanitarian organisations are witnessing their own colleagues and partners waste away before their eyes.' Getting vital aid into Gaza and to the more than two million people who need it has become a key issue in the conflict. A total blockade of aid delivery to the territory – imposed by Israel in early March – was eased in May, and the longstanding United Nations-led system was sidelined for the US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Two months later, however, Gaza's population is still suffering extreme scarcities. In their statement, the humanitarian organisations said that warehouses with tonnes of supplies were sitting untouched inside and outside Gaza, while people were 'trapped in a cycle of hope and heartbreak, waiting for assistance and ceasefires'. 'It is not just physical torment but psychological. Survival is dangled like a mirage,' they said. 'An aid worker providing psychological support spoke of the devastating impact on children: 'Children tell their parents they want to go to heaven, because at least heaven has food'.' According to the UN, more than 1050 Palestinians have been killed trying to get food since May 27. 'In too many cases where UN teams are permitted by Israel to collect supplies from closed compounds near Gaza's crossings, civilians approaching these trucks come under fire despite repeated assurances that troops would not engage or be present,' UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said at briefing earlier this week. 'This cannot be stressed enough that this unacceptable pattern is the opposite of what facilitating humanitarian operations should look like. Absolutely no one should have to risk to their lives to get food.' Israel acting 'according to international law' Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer denied the humanitarian organisations' statement, accusing them of 'serving the propaganda of Hamas, using their numbers and justifying their horrors'. There was 'no famine caused by Israel', Mr Mencer said, but 'a man-made shortage engineered by Hamas'. The extremist group, he said, was preventing supplies from being distributed and looting aid for themselves or to sell at inflated prices. 'Aid has been flowing into Gaza,' Mr Mencer said. He also blamed the UN and its associates for failing to pick up truckloads of foodstuffs and other essentials cleared and waiting on the Gaza side of the border. GHF said the UN, which refuses to work with it over neutrality concerns, 'has a capacity and operational problem' and called for 'more collaboration' to deliver lifesaving aid. The Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), an Israeli defence ministry body overseeing civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, said the 'main obstacle to maintaining a consistent flow of humanitarian aid' was a 'collection bottleneck' blamed on international organisations. While visiting IDF troops in Gaza, President Isaac Herzog similarly maintained his government was acting 'according to international law' while Hamas was 'trying to sabotage' aid distribution in a bid to obstruct the Israeli military campaign that began more than 21 months ago. Mediators have been shuttling between Israeli and Hamas negotiators in Doha since July 6 in search of an elusive truce, with each side blaming the other for refusing to budge on their key demands.
SBS Australia
7 hours ago
- SBS Australia
Israel denies accusations of 'man-made mass starvation' in Gaza
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ABC News
11 hours ago
- ABC News
Gaza suffering 'major catastrophe' as deaths from starvation spike
Musab al Dibes is 14 years old, but looks like a small child instead of a teenager. His weight has dropped from 40 kilograms to 10. WARNING: This story contains images and text some people may find distressing. A major head wounded sustained in an Israeli bombing in May requires further treatment outside Gaza. Instead, he is slowly dying in a hospital bed in Gaza City, with his mother next to him. "His health deteriorated as result of malnutrition because the Gaza strip is suffering from major starvation and a shortage of everything — even medicine, even nutrition supplements," his mother, Shahenaj al Dibes said. "Anything sick people need, if they are in Shifa or any hospital in the Gaza Strip, there is nothing for them. Musab is one of many children — and some adults — lying in the ward of Gaza City's Shifa Hospital, emaciated from lack of food. Like thousands of other Gazan children, Musab was wounded in an Israeli airstrike. "It was 11 o'clock at night, the house next to the tent where we were living was bombed," his mother said. "We did not know what happened. We woke up and found ourselves with wounded in the house. The one who was hurt the worst was Musab. "I am asking from those who are listening to us, and anyone with a live conscience… to hasten treatment [for my son] abroad … so he can say the word 'mummy' again." The Ministry of Health in Gaza said 111 people have died from malnutrition since Israel began its siege, bombardment and invasion of Gaza after the October 7 Hamas attacks, including 10 on just Wednesday alone. The war between Israel and Hamas has been raging for nearly two years since Hamas killed some 1,200 Israelis and took 251 hostages from southern Israel in the deadliest attack in Israel's history. Israel has since killed nearly 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza, decimated Hamas as a military force, reduced most of the territory to ruins and forced nearly the entire population to flee their homes multiple times. Dr. Motaz Harara, one of the physicians at Gaza City's Shifa Hospital, said the rate of people dying of starvation was rapidly rising. "The more there is delay with the food and medicine going in to the Gaza Strip, the more the situation is deteriorating and the number of the wounded and the starving people is on the rise." Dr Harara said the high number of casualties from intensive Israeli bombing, including of emergency workers, was making it difficult to treat malnutrition cases when they arrived. "In addition to the wounded, we have many cases of malnutrition and hunger that we cannot give the necessary amount of medical treatment because of the high number of patients that need urgent treatment," he said. "This causes those who suffer from malnutrition and starvation for a long time not to receive the necessary medical treatment, meaning the patient can go back home and return the next day dead." Aid groups said hundreds of trucks full of food sit just outside Gaza's border, barred by Israeli forces from entering. "[People are starving] because of the government of Israel's restrictions, it's total siege, it's closing of seven crossings into Gaza, seven!," Bushra Khalidi, the occupied Palestinian territories policy lead for the international charity Oxfam, told the ABC. "If we were to open every single crossing right now within an hour, we could get hundreds of trucks in." "Meanwhile, of course, Israeli forces are forcibly displacing two million people into a small, confined area of Gaza now, representing only 12 per cent of the entire Gaza Strip. And now what we're seeing is abhorrent. I mean, I don't even know what adjective to use to describe the rates of malnutrition, of starvation, of children with skin on bones." The Israeli government said it has allowed aid into Gaza, but that humanitarian organisations were not picking it up. "There are more than 700 aid trucks waiting for the UN to pick up inside of Gaza," Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. "This bottleneck is the main obstacle to maintaining a consistent flow of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip." But aid agencies said Israeli military operations and restrictions are preventing them distributing that aid too. "Tons of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items and fuel sit untouched with humanitarian organisations blocked from accessing or delivering them. The Government of Israel's restrictions, delays, and fragmentation under its total siege have created chaos, starvation, and death," more than 100 aid groups said in a joint statement released this week. Palestinians are also struggling to access food from the four of Israeli-approved, privately-run aid distribution sites, operated by a new entity called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), all but one of which are in southern Gaza. The United Nations estimated that, by mid July, more than 875 Palestinians had been killed — allegedly by Israeli fire — when trying to get the limited food available from the GHF sites. The UN and partner agencies refuse to cooperate with the GHF, saying its operations breach international law and the basic humanitarian principles of aid delivery. Israel has resisted criticism of its approach, saying its aid restrictions are intended to isolate the militant group Hamas and prevent it from earning any income. "They are selling it to merchants and selling it to Gaza's people for exorbitant prices and they're using the money to pay for their terrorist fighters. And this seems to be the last leg which Hamas is standing on, which is why it is so important to cut Hamas out of the distribution process." But for mothers like Shahenaj al Dibes, all they want is food for their children. "I beg of you, open the crossings to Gaza as soon as possible, because the situation is catastrophic," she said. ABC with wires
