Latest news with #NestorOwomuhangi
ITV News
22-05-2025
- Health
- ITV News
Aid agency warns supplies are yet to reach vulnerable in Gaza - as child deaths reach 16,500
As the child casualties continue to rise, doctors in Gaza say the hospitals needed to treat them are being bombed out of action, as ITV News Senior International Correspondent John Irvine reports The Palestinian Red Crescent has warned the starving and badly injured in Gaza are yet to receive the aid which has finally been allowed in. It comes as the Israeli military continues to target hospitals with tanks, drones and missiles, with the youngest and most vulnerable among the victims. The Hamas-run Ministry of Health has said 16,500 Palestinian children have been killed since October 7, 2023. After intense international pressure, Israel agreed to allow a "minimal" amount of aid into Gaza, which has been under blockade for several months. Dozens of humanitarian trucks entered the territory this week, some carrying baby food and flour, allowing some kitchens and bakeries to reopen. The UN said the delivery was delayed due to security issues around the access point at the Kerem Shalom crossing on Wednesday night. Despite the trucks eventually being let through, the UN said the amount is woefully insufficient compared to the 600 trucks a day that entered during the ceasefire. Humanitarian groups have warned the territory could be plunged into famine as more than 9,000 children have been treated for malnutrition in Gaza this year, according to the UN children's agency. 'Everywhere you look, people are hungry. ... They point their fingers to their mouths showing that (they) need something to eat,' said Nestor Owomuhangi, the representative of the United Nations Population Fund for the Palestinian territories. 'The worst has already arrived in Gaza.' Meanwhile hospitals are hanging on by a thread with mass casualties from Israeli strikes and feeding centres overwhelmed with patients. 'We have nothing at Nasser Hospital," said Dr. Ahmed al-Farrah, who said his emergency center for malnourished children is at full capacity. "Supplies are running out, people are living off scraps, and the situation is catastrophic for babies and pregnant women", he said. Speaking at the UN Security Council on Thursday, Mirjana Spoljaric, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, asked where the "political courage" is to end the war and reiterated that civilians must be protected in line with international humanitarian law. She said: "This Council is briefed, week after week, about civilians being maimed and murdered, about civilians being detained, tortured, raped, starved, and forcibly displaced. "And yet, we have to ask ourselves: where is the political courage to stop the killing?" On Wednesday Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer said the UK would suspending free trade negotiations with Israel and was leveling new sanctions targeting settlements in the occupied West Bank. The response came after the UK, France and Canada condemned Israel's handling of the war in Gaza and its actions in the West Bank.
The National
13-03-2025
- Health
- The National
Israeli attacks on Gaza reproductive health centres 'genocidal'
Live updates: Follow the latest on Israel-Gaza Israel carried out 'genocidal' acts in Gaza with the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare centres, a UN investigation concluded on Thursday. Forces 'simultaneously imposed a siege and prevented humanitarian assistance, including the provision of necessary medication and equipment to ensure safe pregnancies, deliveries and post-partum and neonatal care', the UN Commission of Inquiry said in a report. 'Israel has increasingly employed sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians as part of a broader effort to undermine their right to self-determination and carried out genocidal acts through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities,' it said. The commission said such acts violate women's and girls' reproductive rights, as well as their right to life, health, human dignity, physical and mental integrity, freedom from torture and degrading treatment. The report came after the commission conducted public hearings in Geneva on Tuesday and Wednesday, hearing from victims and witnesses of sexual violence. The commission said it found that Israeli authorities have partly destroyed the reproductive capacity of Palestinians in Gaza by attacking sexual and reproductive health care. It said that this amounts to 'two categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention, including deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians and imposing measures intended to prevent births'. 'The targeting of reproductive healthcare facilities, including through direct attacks on maternity wards and Gaza's main in-vitro fertility clinic, combined with the use of starvation as a method of war, has impacted all aspects of reproduction,' said the commission's chair Navi Pillay. 'These violations have not only caused severe immediate physical and mental harm and suffering to women and girls, but irreversible long-term effects on the mental health and reproductive and fertility prospects of Palestinians as a group.' The three-person Independent International Commission of Inquiry was established by the UN Human Rights Council in May 2021 to investigate alleged international law violations in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Israel's mission in Geneva said it 'categorically rejects the unfounded allegations'. It accused the commission of advancing a 'predetermined and biased political agenda … in a shameless attempt to incriminate the Israel Defence Forces'. The UN Population Fund estimates that at least 50,000 pregnant women were caught up in the Gaza conflict, cut off from maternity care and delivery services. In September, it reported that more than 17,000 pregnant women were on the brink of famine, with nearly 11,000 experiencing severe food shortages. In February, doctors told the fund's representative Nestor Owomuhangi of the harrowing details of women facing miscarriages as a result of the long and arduous journeys on foot, travelling on broken roads in the wind and rain. About 500,000 returned to Gaza's north after a ceasefire deal took effect in January, many to homes that had been destroyed.
