Israel is accused of 'mass starvation' as 100 charities blast aid blockade: At least ten people 'die of malnutrition' in 24 hours
It brought the toll of deaths from hunger in recent weeks to 111, including 80 children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Harrowing scenes among crowds at aid points have shown desperate women and children pleading for food while photos inside hospitals have revealed starving babies and children.
The United Nations has estimated nearly 100,000 women and children in Gaza are approaching malnutrition.
More than 100 international aid organisations and human rights groups issued a joint letter blaming Israel for the deteriorating situation.
Agencies such as Save the Children, Medecins Sans Frontieres and the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) led the calls for a ceasefire, for land crossings to be reopened and for food, water and medical supplies to be restored.
They wrote: 'Palestinians are trapped in a cycle of hope and heartbreak, waiting for assistance and ceasefires, only to wake up to worsening conditions.
'As mass starvation spreads across Gaza, our colleagues and those we serve 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.' However, Israel denied the claims, insisting that almost 1,000 trucks of aid await distribution by aid agencies to Gazan civilians.
Its foreign ministry accused the groups of 'echoing Hamas propaganda' and said it has allowed around 4,500 aid trucks to enter Gaza since lifting a complete blockade in May.
It insisted that more than 700 lorries are waiting to be picked up and distributed by the UN.
That's an average of around 70 a day, the lowest rate of the war and far below the 500 to 600 trucks a day the UN says are needed and which entered during a six-week ceasefire earlier this year.
The agencies said only 28 trucks a day are getting through because Israel is blocking these organisations from 'accessing and delivering' supplies.
They described Israeli aid drops as 'symbolic' and a 'smokescreen for inaction' while such measures 'cannot replace legal and moral obligations to protect civilians'. At least 100 Palestinians were said yesterday to have died across the enclave in the previous 24 hours.
The move by the agencies appeared to have paid off on Wednesday night as Donald Trump intervened to add pressure on Israel.
More than 100 international aid organisations and human rights groups issued a joint letter blaming Israel for the deteriorating situation
The White House claimed the US President was distressed by the latest 'mass casualty event' on Sunday when 79 civilians were killed after Israeli troops opened fire at an aid station.
Mr Trump has dispatched US peace envoy Steve Witkoff to lead talks in Rome tomorrow, with Israeli minister of strategic affairs Ron Dermer and Qatari envoys representing Hamas.
The appeal by the agencies also came as the UN claimed more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed as they queued for aid in Gaza in the previous two months.
UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres has described the situation in Gaza as 'a horror show' and added: 'We are seeing the last gasp of a humanitarian system built on humanitarian principles.'
The Vatican has expressed growing frustration at the killings in Gaza 'of children queueing for a handful of rice'.
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The Herald Scotland
36 minutes ago
- The Herald Scotland
Israel pauses military action, opens aid lines amid Gaza crisis
"A third of the population (in Gaza) is not eating for days," the World Food Programme, led by Cindy McCain, said in a statement on X. "Some 470,000 people are enduring famine-like conditions. 90,000 women and children need urgent nutrition treatment. People are dying due to a lack of humanitarian assistance." More than 125 people have died due to malnutrition, including 85 children, the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said over the weekend. A five-month-old baby, Zainab Abu Haleeb, died of malnutrition at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza on July 26. In recent weeks, more than 800 people have been killed while trying to reach food, according to the United Nations, mostly in shootings by Israeli soldiers posted near controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution centers. Israeli officials have said they've allowed enough food into Gaza since war broke out in October 2023 after Hamas attacked Israel, blaming the terrorist group for suffering in a region of 2.2 million people. Meanwhile, ceasefire talks have stalled, with no permanent end to the fighting in sight. Here's what to know about the growing humanitarian crisis. What's going on in Gaza? Beginning July 27, Israel will pause military action in a humanitarian area along the coast of Gaza for 10 hours at a time, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. local time, each day. The military said designated secure routes for convoys delivering food and medicine will also be in place between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. Tom Fletcher, aid chief for the United Nations, called the move a "welcome announcement" in a post on X. "In contact with our teams on the ground who will do all we can to reach as many starving people as we can in this window," Fletcher wrote. What do human rights groups say? The U.N.'s World Food Program also welcomed the news, saying in a statement, "we hope these measures will allow for a surge in urgently needed food assistance to reach hungry people without further delays." Israel's move comes after 111 groups signed a joint statement calling for governments to take action, as mass starvation spread and restrictions on humanitarian aid prevented resources from reaching Palestinians in Gaza. "The Government of Israel's restrictions, delays, and fragmentation under its total siege have created chaos, starvation, and death," the groups, made up of mostly aid and human rights organizations, wrote. Why was aid restricted before? Hunger in Gaza escalated after Israel cut off supplies in March. Israel had said it was committed to allowing in aid - but needed to control it to prevent it from being diverted by Hamas. The country also accused the U.N. of failing to act in a timely fashion, saying 700 truckloads of aid were idling inside Gaza. "Responsibility for food distribution to the population in Gaza lies with the UN and international aid organizations," the Israeli military said in a July 26 statement. "Therefore, the UN and international organizations are expected to improve the effectiveness of aid distribution and to ensure that the aid does not reach Hamas." An internal U.S. government analysis found no evidence of systematic theft by Hamas of U.S.-funded humanitarian supplies, Reuters reported last week. Where are ceasefire talks? President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared on July 25 to abandon ceasefire negotiations, saying it was clear Hamas did not want a deal. "I think they want to die," Trump said of the militants. "And it's very bad. And it got to be to a point where you're going to have to finish the job." Humanitarian groups have urged Israel to reach a deal, saying the only real solution to the suffering in Gaza is a complete end to the fighting. "An agreed ceasefire is the only way for humanitarian assistance to reach the entire civilian population in Gaza with critical food supplies in a consistent, predictable, orderly and safe manner," the U.N. World Food Program said in their statement. Contributing: Reuters
The Independent
39 minutes ago
- The Independent
Israeli forces kill 63 Palestinian in Gaza within hours of ‘humanitarian pause'
The Israeli military killed at least 63 people across Gaza just hours after declaring daily 'pauses' in operations to facilitate the passage of humanitarian aid, health officials said. The military said on Sunday it would suspend operations daily from 10am until 8pm in parts of central and northern Gaza, including al-Mawasi, Deir el-Balah and Gaza City, and promised to open aid corridors from 6am to 11pm to let in food and medical supplies. However, within hours of the so-called 'humanitarian pause' taking effect, Israeli forces resumed air raids. One reported strike targeted a bakery in an area designated as a 'safe zone', according to Al Jazeera. The humanitarian crisis continued to worsen. Health officials reported six more deaths, including of two children, from starvation in the past 24 hours, taking the total to 133. Among the latest to succumb was five-month-old Zainab Abu Haleeb, who died of malnutrition at the Nasser Hospital. 'Three months inside the hospital and this is what I get in return, that she is dead,' her mother Israa Abu Haleeb told Al Jazeera. The World Food Programme said one in three people in Gaza had gone days without food and about half a million were experiencing famine-like conditions. More than 20 per cent of pregnant and breastfeeding women were malnourished, according to the World Health Organization. Israel maintains that it is working to improve aid access and denies that famine exists in Gaza. But aid organisations say the situation is catastrophic, with a quarter of the population at risk of acute malnutrition. UN officials say the crisis won't ease unless Israel speeds up the movement of aid convoys through its checkpoints. A top UN official said last week Palestinians were beginning to resemble 'walking corpses'. Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, said humanitarian workers were encountering children who were 'emaciated, weak and at high risk of dying' without immediate intervention. 'Families are no longer coping. They're breaking down, unable to survive,' Mr Lazzarini said. 'Their existence is threatened.' Israel has severely limited the flow of food and humanitarian aid into Gaza, allowing only a small number of trucks to enter each day after enforcing an 11-week total blockade earlier this year. UN officials warn the current level of aid is merely a drop in the ocean compared to the scale of need. The Israeli military intercepted an aid ship bound for Gaza that aimed to breach the blockade on the Palestinian territory, detaining 21 international activists and journalists and confiscating all cargo, including baby formula, food, and medicine, according to the Freedom Flotilla Coalition on Sunday. The group said Israeli forces 'violently intercepted' their vessel, Handala, in international waters around 40 nautical miles off the coast of Gaza, cutting off cameras and communication shortly before midnight on Saturday. 'All cargo was non-military, civilian and intended for direct distribution to a population facing deliberate starvation and medical collapse under Israel's illegal blockade,'' the group said in a statement. It was the second ship operated by the coalition that Israeli forces prevented in recent months from delivering aid to Gaza. It was reported on Sunday that Jordan and the UAE had begun airdropping aid into the besieged Palestinian territory. But Mr Lazzarini said 'airdrops will not reverse the deepening starvation'. 'They are expensive, inefficient and can even kill starving civilians. It is a distraction & smokescreen,' he said in an X post. 'A manmade hunger can only be addressed by political will. Lift the siege, open the gates and guarantee safe movements with dignified access to people in need. Israel's war on Gaza has killed nearly 60,000 Palestinians, injured over 144,000, and left most of the densely populated coastal territory in ruins and the majority of its 2.2 million people homeless and starving. Israel launched the war in October 2023 after nearly 1,200 Israelis were killed and 251 taken hostage during a Hamas attack.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Protesting over Gaza's starvation feels like screaming into a void – but we mustn't stop
The children die first. In conditions of starvation, their growing bodies' nutritional needs are higher than those of adults, and so their reserves are depleted faster. Their immune systems, not yet fully developed, become weaker, more susceptible to disease and infection. A bout of diarrhoea is lethal. Their wounds don't heal. The babies cannot be breastfed as their mothers have not eaten. They die at double the rate of adults. Last week, over a period of just 72 hours, 21 children died in Gaza of malnutrition and starvation. The path to death from starvation is a slow and agonising one, especially in a territory suffering shortages of not just food, but medicine, shelter and clean water. The total death toll from hunger surpassed 100 at the weekend; 80 of those were children. An aid worker reported that children are telling their parents that they want to die and go to heaven, because 'at least heaven has food'. Every single one of these deaths, and those that will come, is preventable. The World Health Organization described the starvation as 'man-made', but it is more than that. It is foreseeable and thus deliberate. Israel's siege on Gaza has blocked tonnes of aid from entering, or being distributed to those who need it, according to humanitarian organisations there. The 'tactical pause' of military operations for a few hours a day in three parts of the Gaza Strip to allow in some aid is a measure that does not ameliorate a crisis accrued over time. The starvation, long warned about, is the latest phase of a campaign almost two years long, for which words are now entirely inadequate. Genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass punishment – all these descriptions still somehow do not capture the lurid and varied ways in which Palestinians in Gaza are being killed: bombed in their homes, and in their tents, burned alive in their hospital beds, shot while queueing for food and now starved. It almost doesn't matter what it is called any more, because all you need to see to know that what is happening is a crime that requires immediate action is the bones of a child sticking out of its thin skin, while the food it needs is being blocked by Israeli soldiers. The time for justifications, arguing about semantics and hand-wringing over the 'complexity' of the conflict has long passed. The only question now is, how is it that the world cannot get Israel to allow a morsel of food into a starving civilian's mouth? How is this a government still not decisively cut off, sanctioned and embargoed? How is this a government, still, that David Lammy thinks he can 'urge' to do the right thing? The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, posted on X calling the images from Gaza 'unbearable', and called for more aid to be let in and for Israel to 'deliver on its pledges'. This, and other EU social media statements, was described by an Oxfam official as 'hollow' and 'baffling'. Benjamin Netanyahu has proved, over and over, that he has no intention of complying with anything. Only last week, a minister said that 'there is no nation that feeds its enemies', and that the government was 'rushing toward Gaza being wiped out' while also 'driving out the population that educated its people on the ideas of Mein Kampf'. The truth is that there is no strategic goal for defeating Hamas, only constantly shifting goalposts, under a prime minister who has yoked his political survival to the indefinite extension of an assault on Gaza. And in the meantime, the escalating horrors and their relentless continuation unsettle and reconfigure the world. But the more the hard, cold core of support for Israel's actions is revealed, the more credibility and legitimacy drains away from it. The result is a head-on confrontation between political establishments and the public in a situation that is no longer manageable. The recent escalating rhetoric, for it is only that, from Keir Starmer is an indication that Gaza is now an issue that must be paid lip service to if it is not to further coalesce into a domestic problem for an already embattled government. But still, that rhetoric seems to be part of an elaborate game, in which everyone dances increasingly performatively around what needs to happen. That game is to maintain, no matter the violation, the tenability of Israel as a moral player, while pretending that when it transgresses it will be scolded back into compliance. The 'when' here is important. The players of this game are constantly inventing new beginnings, new red lines, new watersheds, which mean the necessary point of rupture with Israel is constantly moved to a new point on the horizon. Whether it is the killing of aid workers, the killing of those actually seeking aid, or now the starvation, each escalation of Israel's campaign seems to trigger a fresh wave of finger wagging. The result is a permanent moment of impending action, as threatened by Lammy. Action that never comes. And while we wait, the status quo is maintained in a holding pattern until the latest horror fades from our screens and front pages. Or Israel applies some temporary measure, such as its 'tactical pause' in the fighting, that does not address the fundamental conditions of siege, blockade and civilian killings. But protest, no matter how ostensibly ineffective, remains the only way any pressure can be applied on those who have the power to censure Israel in ways that are meaningful, by ceasing military and trade relations. Protesting might feel like screaming into a void, but even the little change we have seen – the pitifully few trucks of aid now rolling into Gaza – is down to the strain of that confrontation with the political establishment. What else public anger is capable of achieving can only be realised if it does not relent. The way that strain translates into something meaningful can be impossible to divine, because being subjected to these placatory ruses for almost two years has been enough to inflict a sort of cognitive injury. We are told by powerful politicians that things cannot continue as they are, and then, suddenly, it is another few months and things have not only continued but worsened. There is something genuinely mind-bending about it, something exhausting and scattering of resolve when it seems that finally, something seems to be shifting and sanity is prevailing, and then it doesn't. The purpose is to quieten the public through verbal laudanum, or distract it by the lowest-cost calls for recognising a Palestinian state. These are phantom wins, a grotesque exercise in crowd control, reputation laundering and public opinion management. Innocents are now starving to death. All that is not action is noise. Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist
