The fight for survival continues in northern Gaza as Israel’s devastating siege and bombing of the area enters its 23rd day.
An Oxfam official told Tel Aviv Tribune on Sunday that Israel was using famine as a weapon in its genocide against Palestinians and that the UK-based NGO was unable to reach populations in the north in due to Israel’s ongoing bombing campaign.
Mahmoud Alsaqqa, Oxfam’s head of food security and livelihoods in Gaza, warned that some Palestinians are “starving” in northern Gaza and that more people will die in the coming days.
“There is nothing. You are talking about dozens of days without receiving supplies,” he said, adding that most Palestinians in the region depend on humanitarian aid.
Humanitarian agencies say that around 96 percent of Gaza’s population faces high levels of food shortage. According to UNICEF, nine out of ten children do not have the nutrition they need for their growth and development. At least 37 children died of malnutrition or dehydration during a year of war.
The United Nations says Israel has blocked the entry of 83 percent of food aid into the Gaza Strip since the start of the war. According to the report, around 50,000 children under the age of five will need urgent treatment for malnutrition by the end of the year.
Oxfam’s warning comes as Israeli forces bombarded more neighborhoods in northern Gaza on Sunday and humanitarian officials raised the alarm over ongoing ground attacks by Israeli forces, who are forcibly displacing tens of thousands of residents outside the area.
At least 35 people were killed in Beit Lahiya on Saturday after the Israeli army targeted five buildings in the northern Gaza Strip. Ten other people were killed in another attack in Beit Lahiya.
Israeli strikes on the towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoon and Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza have so far killed around 800 Palestinians during the ongoing siege, Gaza’s health ministry said.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, said at least 35 people are missing and may be under the rubble, or may have been “vaporized” by force. Israeli bombs.
Additionally, an Israeli airstrike on a house in Jabalia killed several people and injured others on Sunday morning, Palestinian medics said.
“People were told to evacuate the Jabalia refugee camp to avoid being bombed, but by the time they arrived in areas far from Jabalia in central and western northern Gaza, they were bombed and mutilated in the areas they were asked to evacuate. evacuate to,” Mahmoud said.
“Israeli soldiers are forcing people out of evacuation centers and setting them on fire,” he added.
“Dying in genocide”
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, said on social media platform .
Albanese was responding to a statement Saturday by UN humanitarian chief Joyce Msuya warning that “the entire population of northern Gaza is at risk of dying” under Israel’s siege.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said Saturday that ongoing Israeli evacuation orders and restrictions on the entry of essential supplies to the north had left the civilian population in “horrible circumstances.”
“Many civilians are currently unable to move, trapped by fighting, destruction or physical constraints and now lack access to basic medical care,” the statement said.
Palestinian health officials said the siege had paralyzed the health system in northern Gaza and was preventing medical teams from reaching bombed sites.
Israel says its forces returned to northern Gaza more than a year after the start of the war to eliminate Hamas fighters who had gathered there. The Israeli army claimed to have “eliminated more than 40 terrorists” in the Jabalia region over the past 24 hours, dismantling infrastructure and locating “large quantities of military equipment”.
But Mansour Shouman, a Palestinian journalist who lived in Gaza, said Israel wanted to force Palestinians out of the northern part of the Strip to create settlements there.
“This area has been undergoing very heavy land invasion attempts by the Israelis for three weeks. You all hear what’s going on with the medical services there. You all hear what happened with the implementation of the General’s Plan, which aims to eradicate the presence of Palestinians in the north of the Gaza Strip… and push them further south, in order to create a buffer zone for the Israelis, then to create settlements there,” Shouman told Tel Aviv Tribune.
