'Mass starvation' spreading across Gaza, as children die of hunger

Three-month-old baby boy Yahya has died of starvation in Gaza, his family and doctors told CGTN.

"My family couldn't find baby formula or food to feed him," said his aunt Najla Al-Najjar.

Dr Ragheb Warsh Agha from Al-Rantisi Children's Hospital in Gaza City said the hospital has received many children with malnutrition and chronic diarrhea, due to a shortage of baby milk.

In the past 24 hours, 15 people starved to death in Gaza, Reuters reported citing doctors who say a wave of hunger that has loomed over the enclave for months is now finally crashing down.

For the first time since Israel launched strikes on Gaza in October 2023, Palestinian officials say dozens are now also dying of hunger.

Gaza has seen its food stocks run out since Israel cut off all supplies to the territory in March and then lifted that blockade in May with new measures it claims are needed to prevent aid from being diverted to militant groups.

At least 101 people are known to have died of hunger during the conflict, Reuters reported citing Palestinian officials, including 80 children, most of them in just the last few weeks.

Israel, which controls all supplies entering Gaza, denies it is responsible for shortages of food. It says humanitarian aid is being allowed into Gaza and accuses Hamas of exploiting civilian suffering, including by stealing food handouts to sell at inflated prices or shooting at those awaiting aid. 

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Food and medicine shortages

Israeli military statistics showed on Tuesday that an average of 146 trucks of aid per day had entered Gaza over the course of the war. However, the UN has said a minimum of 600 trucks per day are needed to feed Gaza's population.

"Hospitals are already overwhelmed by the number of casualties from gunfire. They can't provide much more help for hunger-related symptoms because of food and medicine shortages," said Khalil al-Deqran, a spokesperson for the health ministry in Gaza.

Deqran said some 600,000 people were suffering from malnutrition, including at least 60,000 pregnant women. Symptoms among those going hungry include dehydration and anaemia, he said.

Baby formula in particular is in critically short supply, according to aid groups, doctors and residents.

Warning of mass starvation

The hunger is spreading. 

The head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency said on Tuesday that its staff, as well as doctors and humanitarian workers, were fainting on duty in Gaza due to hunger and exhaustion.

The AFP journalists' association on Monday said its freelancers in the Gaza Strip are facing extreme food shortages and risk starving. 

The French news agency has been working with a freelance reporter, three photographers and six freelance video journalists in the Gaza Strip.

Naming one of them, Bashar Taleb, who is working for the agency as a photographer, the association shared his social media post, showing grave conditions in the besieged enclave.

"I don't have the power to cover media anymore. My body is lean and I no longer have the ability to walk," Taleb, 30, wrote in a Facebook post on Saturday.

On Wednesday, some 111 aid organizations including Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children and Oxfam, have warned that "mass starvation" was spreading in Gaza and called for an immediate negotiated ceasefire, the opening of all land crossing and the free flow of aid through UN-led mechanisms. 

In their statement, the humanitarian organizations said that warehouses with tonnes of supplies were sitting untouched just outside the territory, and even inside, as they were blocked from accessing or delivering the goods.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Tuesday that the "horror" facing Palestinians in Gaza under Israeli military attack was unprecedented in recent years.

(With input from Reuters, AFP)