More than 100 aid organisations warned on Wednesday of “mass starvation” across Gaza, with their staff severely affected by widespread shortages. Israel is under mounting international pressure as the humanitarian crisis in the enclave worsens, with more than 2 million people enduring 21 months of conflict.
In a statement, 111 organisations, including Mercy Corps, the Norwegian Refugee Council, Refugees International, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Save the Children and Oxfam, said mass starvation was spreading – even as tonnes of food, clean water and medical supplies sit untouched just outside Gaza, with aid groups blocked from accessing them.
France also warned of a growing "risk of famine" caused by "the blockade imposed by Israel".
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The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) also weighed in, saying that a large proportion of the population of Gaza is starving.
"I don't know what you would call it other than mass starvation, and it's manmade," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters.
The humanitarian organisations said in a joint statement that warehouses with tonnes of supplies were sitting untouched, while people were "trapped in a cycle of hope and heartbreak, waiting for assistance and ceasefires".
Health crisis
Israel cut off all supplies to Gaza from the start of March, reopening access with new restrictions in May. It says it is committed to allowing in aid but must control it to prevent it from being diverted by militants.
"I asked them for dietary supplements, but they told me they only gave them to children under five," Oum Oussama, a resident of Gaza City, told RFI's correspondent in Gaza, from the Al Shifa hospital.
"What will he eat? My son only has one kidney. The water we drink is contaminated. I have nothing left to give him to eat. Now he's skin and bones."
The emergency manager of the hospital, Moatez Harara, sees the arrival of fragile, sick people, deprived of treatment due to the disastrous living conditions, daily. And he says they are the first to die.
"They are unable to eat properly," he told RFI. "They eat whatever they can find, which makes their condition worse. Hunger makes the body adapt and transform proteins into sugars to survive.
"The world must stop this. We must reopen the crossings and let food in. Otherwise, the sick and hungry will continue to arrive, and the hospitals will no longer be able to respond. They will collapse."
Dying children
According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, 16 children died of starvation in July alone.
The Ministry reports that an increasing number of Palestinians are dying from hunger each day, with the total number of starvation-related deaths now reaching 111. Most of these fatalities have occurred in recent weeks, as a wave of hunger sweeps through the Palestinian enclave.
The United Nations and aid groups trying to deliver food to Gaza say Israel, which controls everything that comes in and out, is choking delivery.
Israeli troops are also reported to have shot hundreds of Palestinians dead close to aid collection points since May.
"We have a minimum set of requirements to be able to operate inside Gaza," Ross Smith, the director of emergencies at the UN World Food Programme (WFP), told Reuters news agency.
"One of the most important things I want to emphasise is that we need to have no armed actors near our distribution points, near our convoys," he added.
In New York, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) added its voice to the appeal, accusing Israel of "starving Gazan journalists into silence", after reporters from the AFP news agency in Gaza said they were being affected by the lack of food.
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Israel hit back on Wednesday at growing international criticism that it was behind chronic food shortages in Gaza, instead accusing Hamas of deliberately creating a humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territory.
Israel has also accused the United Nations of failing to act in a timely fashion, saying 700 truckloads of aid are idling inside Gaza.
"It is time for them to pick it up and stop blaming Israel for the bottlenecks which are occurring," Israeli government spokesman David Mercer said on Wednesday.
Faltering peace talks
The war between Israel and Hamas has been raging since 7 October, 2023, when the militant branch of Hamas killed at least 1,100 Israelis, mostly soldiers, and took 251 hostages from southern Israel in the deadliest attack in Israel's history.
Israel has since killed nearly 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza, decimated Hamas as a military force, reduced most of the territory to ruins and forced almost the entire population to flee their homes multiple times.
The United States said on Wednesday its top Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, was heading to Europe for talks on a possible Gaza ceasefire and an aid corridor, raising hopes of a breakthrough after more than two weeks of negotiations.
But the deadly Israeli strikes continue across the territory.
Talks on a proposal for a 60-day ceasefire between Israel and Hamas are being mediated by Qatar and Egypt, with Washington's backing. They could include the release of more of the 50 Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza.
However, since the collapse of a ceasefire in March, successive rounds of negotiations have failed to achieved a breakthrough.
(with newswires)
