MSF says quarter of Gaza's children, pregnant or breastfeeding women malnourished
The medical charity known by its French acronym MSF said that 'across screenings of children aged six months to five years old and pregnant and breastfeeding women at MSF facilities last week, 25 percent were malnourished', warning that 'rates of severe malnutrition in children under five have tripled in the last two weeks alone.'
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Arab News
10 hours ago
- Arab News
GHF aid distribution sites in Gaza becoming ‘laboratories of cruelty,' says medical charity
LONDON: Doctors Without Borders has accused a controversial aid initiative in Gaza of enabling the systematic targeting and killing of civilians, it was reported on Thursday. In a scathing new report, the medical charity — also known by its French acronym MSF— said aid distribution centers run by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation had become sites of 'orchestrated killing.' Raquel Ayora, one of the charity's general directors, said: 'In MSF's nearly 54 years of operations, rarely have we seen such levels of systematic violence against unarmed civilians. 'The GHF distribution sites masquerading as 'aid' have morphed into a laboratory of cruelty. This must stop now.' The group is calling for GHF's operations to be scrapped immediately and replaced with a UN-led system. It has urged governments and donors to 'suspend all financial and political support for the GHF.' In a report by Sky News, the channel contacted both the GHF and the Israel Defense Forces for comment. In an interview on Wednesday, IDF spokesperson Nadav Shoshani dismissed the allegations, claiming: 'I think that is completely false,' and described some reports of shootings as 'fake news.' Between June 7 and July 24, MSF says it treated 1,380 people wounded near GHF aid sites at two of its clinics. Among the injured were 71 children, 25 of them under the age of 15. The charity said 28 people were dead on arrival. Among the cases were an 8-year-old girl shot in the chest, and a 12-year-old boy hit in the abdomen. The charity described several injuries as precise and deliberate. 'The distinct patterns and anatomical precision of these injuries strongly suggests the intentional targeting of people within and around the distribution sites, rather than accidental or indiscriminate fire,' the report stated. Gunshot wounds recorded at MSF's Al-Mawasi Clinic showed 11 percent struck victims in the head or neck, while 19 percent were to the torso. In Khan Younis, injuries to the lower limbs were more common. One patient, Mohammed Riad Tabasi, said: 'We're being slaughtered. I've been injured maybe 10 times. I saw it with my own eyes, about 20 corpses around me; all of them shot in the head (and) in the stomach.' The report also documented 196 injuries caused by stampedes or chaos during aid distribution. One woman died of likely asphyxiation in a crush. Others, MSF said, were beaten or robbed after receiving food. The GHF took over much of Gaza's aid provision in May after Israel ended an 11-week blockade. But the operation has drawn mounting international criticism. A previous Sky News investigation linked GHF-led aid drops to spikes in fatalities, and UN officials have condemned the system as 'death traps.' UN experts this week called the program 'an utterly disturbing example of how humanitarian relief can be exploited for covert military and geopolitical agendas in serious breach of international law.' They reiterated calls for Israel to restore access for UN agencies and humanitarian nongovernmental organizations. MSF echoed the demand and directly urged the US to end its support. 'Despite the condemnations and calls for dismantling it, the global inaction to stop GHF is baffling,' said Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa, MSF's emergency coordinator. The IDF maintains that humanitarian access is not being obstructed. 'There is no limit of aid getting into Gaza,' Shoshani said. 'Every day, hundreds of trucks go into Gaza.' Israeli officials argue the GHF model prevents supplies being stolen by Hamas and ensures they reach civilians directly. Steve Witkoff, the US' special envoy to the Middle East, last week toured one of the sites. 'We're putting up money to get the people fed,' US President Donald Trump declared at the same time.
Arab News
26-07-2025
- Arab News
Famine, starvation: challenges in defining Gaza's plight
PARIS: The UN and NGOs are warning of an imminent famine in the Gaza Strip — a designation based on strict criteria and scientific evidence. But the difficulty of getting to the most affected areas in the Palestinian territory, besieged by Israel, means there are huge challenges in gathering the required data. The internationally agreed definition for famine is outlined by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, an initiative of 21 organizations and institutions including UN agencies and aid groups. The IPC definition has three elements. Firstly, at least 20 percent of households must have an extreme lack of food and face starvation or destitution. Second, acute malnutrition in children under five exceeds 30 percent. Almost a third of people in Gaza are not eating for days and malnutrition is surging. UN's World Food Programme And third, there is an excess mortality threshold of two in 10,000 people dying per day. Once these criteria are met, governments and UN agencies can declare a famine. Available indicators are alarming regarding the food situation in Gaza. 'A large proportion of the population of Gaza is starving,' according to the World Health Organization's chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Food deliveries are 'far below what is needed for the survival of the population,' he said, calling it 'man-made ... mass starvation.' Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, said on Friday that a quarter of all young children and pregnant or breastfeeding women screened at its clinics in Gaza last week were malnourished, blaming Israel's 'deliberate use of starvation as a weapon.' Almost a third of people in Gaza are 'not eating for days' and malnutrition is surging, the UN's World Food Programme said Friday. The head of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday said that 21 children had died across the Palestinian territory in the previous 72 hours 'due to malnutrition and starvation.' The very few foodstuffs in the markets are inaccessible, with a kg of flour reaching the exorbitant price of $100, while the Gaza Strip's agricultural land has been ravaged by the war. According to humanitarian organizations, the 20 or so aid trucks that enter the territory each day — vastly insufficient for more than 2 million hungry people — are systematically looted. 'It's become a technical point to explain that we're in acute food insecurity, IPC4, which affects almost the entire population. It doesn't resonate with people,' said Amande Bazerolle, in charge of MSF's emergency response in Gaza. 'Yet we're hurtling toward famine — that's a certainty.' NGOs and the WHO concede that gathering the evidence required for a famine declaration is extremely difficult. 'Currently, we are unable to conduct the surveys that would allow us to formally classify famine,' said Bazerolle. She said it was 'impossible' for them to screen children, take their measurements, or assess their weight-to-height ratio. Jean-Raphael Poitou, Middle East program director for the NGO Action Against Hunger, said the 'continuous displacements' of Gazans ordered by the Israeli military, along with restrictions on movement in the most affected regions, 'complicate things enormously.' Nabil Tabbal, incident manager at the WHO's emergency program, said there were 'challenges regarding data, regarding access to information.'
Al Arabiya
25-07-2025
- Al Arabiya
MSF says quarter of Gaza's children, pregnant or breastfeeding women malnourished
MSF said Friday that a quarter of all young children and pregnant or breastfeeding women screened at its clinics in Gaza last week were malnourished, blaming Israel's 'policy of starvation.' The medical charity known by its French acronym MSF said that 'across screenings of children aged six months to five years old and pregnant and breastfeeding women at MSF facilities last week, 25 percent were malnourished', warning that 'rates of severe malnutrition in children under five have tripled in the last two weeks alone.'
