Latest starvation deaths take overall toll to 101 as UN says doctors, aid workers are also fainting on the job from hunger and exhaustion.
At least 15 Palestinians, including four children, have starved to death in a single day in the besieged Gaza Strip, according to health officials, bringing the total number of deaths from malnutrition since Israel’s war began to 101.
The announcement on Tuesday came as Israeli forces continued to pound Gaza, killing at least 81 people, and the United Nations described the situation in the enclave as a “horror show with a level of death and destruction without parallel in recent times”.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health said that the 15 starvation-related deaths over the past 24 hours included four children and that the overall toll of 101 included 80 children.
Most of the deaths have come in the last few weeks.
Among the children who died on Tuesday were six-week-old Yousef al-Safadi, who passed away at a hospital in northern Gaza City, and 13-year-old Abdulhamid al-Ghalban, who died in another medical facility in southern Khan Younis, according to doctors.
Yousef’s uncle, Adham al-Safadi, told the Reuters news agency that the infant’s mother had not been able to breastfeed because she was not eating and the family could not find baby formula to feed him.
“You can’t get milk anywhere, and if you do find any, it’s $100 for a tub,” al-Safadi told Reuters. “The mother can’t breastfeed. There’s no food and drinks, so there is no breastmilk. The baby died of malnutrition.”
According to the UN, Israeli forces have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians seeking food aid since the GHF began its operations, most of them near the group’s distribution points.
The 81 Palestinians killed on Tuesday include at least 31 aid seekers, according to medics in Gaza.
Fifteen others were killed in an Israeli attack on a building housing displaced people in northern Gaza City, according to a source at al-Shifa Hospital, while 13 more were killed and 50 others wounded in a strike on the nearby Shati refugee camp, according to the Palestinian Civil Defence.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, speaking at the Security Council, highlighted the “horror show” for the 2.3 million Palestinians in the enclave.
“Malnourishment is soaring, starvation is knocking on every door, and now we are seeing the last gasp of a humanitarian system built on humanitarian principles,” he said. “This system is being denied the space to function, denied the space to deliver, denied the safety to save lives.”
‘Horror show’ in Gaza
Guterres said that Israel has intensified military operations in Gaza, including by issuing new forced displacement orders in parts of central Deir el-Balah, a city that was considered the last remotely safe area in the Strip.
Guterres said the latest order was layering devastation “upon devastation”.
Doctors in Gaza, meanwhile, said they are seeing increasing numbers of malnourished people arriving at their hospitals.
Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the director of al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza, told reporters that there could be “alarming numbers” of deaths due to starvation.
Khalil al-Daqran, the spokesperson for Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza, said doctors are not able to help those suffering from malnutrition.
“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,” he said.
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.
Healthcare workers and humanitarian staff in Gaza were also reporting fainting on the job because of the hunger and exhaustion, according to officials.
“No one is spared: caretakers in Gaza are also in need of care,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, wrote on X. “Doctors, nurses, journalists & humanitarians are hungry. Many are now fainting due to hunger & exhaustion while performing their duties: reporting atrocities or alleviating some of the suffering.”
Lazzarini went on to say that seeking food in Gaza has become as deadly as the Israeli bombardments and denounced the GHF schemes as “a sadistic death trap”.
“Snipers open fire randomly on crowds as if they are given a licence to kill. A massive hunt of people, in total impunity. This cannot be our new norm, humanitarian assistance is not the job of mercenaries,” he said.
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