“Israel has been intentionally starving the Palestinian people in Gaza since 8 October. Now it is targeting civilians seeking humanitarian aid and humanitarian convoys,” the experts said in a statement.
“Israel must end its campaign of starvation and targeting of civilians,” they urged, as 16 children have already died of malnutrition at the Kamal Adwan Hospital and there are fears that the figures could be higher in other hospitals.
They also condemned last week’s Israeli attack, which killed at least 120 people and injured some 760 gathered to collect flour in Gaza, as a “massacre” amid the current conditions.
Noting that the attack came after Israel denied humanitarian aid into Gaza City and northern Gaza for more than a month, they stated the attack marks a “pattern of Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians seeking aid, with over 14 recorded incidents of shooting, shelling and targeting groups gathered to receive urgently needed supplies from trucks or airdrops between mid-January and the end of February”.
“Israel has also opened fire on humanitarian aid convoys on several occasions, despite the fact that the convoys shared their coordinates with Israel,” the experts lamented.
They stressed that the recent airdrops will “achieve little,” and warned: “After months of Israel’s starvation campaign, Gaza may already be facing famine.”
“The only way to prevent or end this famine is an immediate and permanent ceasefire,” they added.
Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by Palestinian group Hamas in October 2023, in which nearly 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed.
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, 30,600 Palestinians have been killed and 72,000 others injured during the Israeli deadly onslaught on Gaza.
About 85% of Gazans have been displaced by the Israeli onslaught, while all of them are food insecure, according to the UN. Hundreds of thousands of people are living without shelter, and less than half of aid trucks are entering the territory than before the start of the conflict.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, which in an interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.
On Tuesday, the UNICEF warned that under the current circumstances, malnutrition-related deaths in Gaza would “skyrocket” as 15 children have been confirmed to have died of starvation in the northern strip.
“We are seeing those deaths that we long feared,” spokesman James Elder told a UN press briefing in Geneva, adding, “We are seeing deaths from those (malnutrition) and we will see those continue to skyrocket.”
Recalling UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa Adele Khodr’s statement about the malnutrition in the northern Gaza Strip and in the south, in Rafah, Elder said the situation has “only gotten worse”, and warned: “We’ll see an explosion in child deaths and call that imminent if the burgeoning nutrition crisis isn’t resolved.”
Regarding the critical urgency of getting aid into the Gaza Strip, he added, “The malnutrition rates of (children) under-fives in the north are three times higher than those in Rafah.”
“So, some evidence that when that trickle of aid can come in, it does make a life-saving difference,” he continued.
In a recent statement, the Gaza media office said the number of children dying of hunger in the north of the Gaza Strip and Gaza City, where humanitarian aid could not be delivered due to Israeli obstacles, increased to 16, and that 700,000 Palestinians were facing the threat of severe hunger.
The World Health Organization spokesperson also told the briefing that the nutrition screenings conducted at shelters and health centers in the north found that 15.6%, or one in six children under the age of 2 are acutely malnourished.
Of these, almost 3% suffer from severe wasting, Richard Peeperkorn said, citing the data collected in January. Peeperkorn warned that the situation is likely to be “even graver” now.
Similar screenings in Rafah, where aid has been more available, found that 5% of children under age 2 are acutely malnourished, he added.
He stressed that waste in the Gaza Strip was “rare” before the ongoing hostilities as it was affecting only 0.8% of children under age.
The rate of 15.6% of wasting among children under 2 in northern Gaza “suggests a serious and rapid decline,” the spokesperson added.
“Such a decline in a population’s nutritional status in three months is unprecedented globally,” Peeperkorn continued.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) announced on Tuesday Palestinian babies are slowly dying in the Gaza Strip amid an Israeli offensive on the enclave.
“Around 17,000 children in Gaza are orphaned,” UNRWA said in a statement.
The UN agency added 1 in 6 children under two years is acutely malnourished in the northern Gaza Strip.
“Babies slowly perishing under the world’s gaze.”
“Children dying from bombs, even more now dying from consequences of siege. These horrific deaths are entirely preventable,” it noted.
The UN humanitarian agency also said the death of children in Gaza due to starvation should be “a warning like no other” and called on the international community to “flood” the strip with aid.
“If not now, when is the time to pull the stops, break the glass, flood Gaza with the aid that it needs?” Jens Laerke, spokesman for OCHA, asked reporters in Geneva.
The Palestinian foreign minister stated on Tuesday some 80% of the world’s most hunger-ravaged people live in the Gaza Strip.
“Israel has openly destroyed more than 85% of the Gaza Strip, killed and starved children, and deprived the sick and injured of their basic right to treatment,” Riyad al-Maliki said at an extraordinary ministerial meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in the Saudi city of Jeddah.
“Around 80% of the hungriest people in the world today live in Gaza,” he added.
“Israel has virtually committed every violation of international law against our people, who are facing the most heinous forms of genocide,” al-Maliki continued.
