6/14/2024–|Last updated: 6/14/202401:48 PM (Mecca time)
The northern Gaza Strip is facing a humanitarian catastrophe as a result of the scarcity of food supplies, which led to the death of a child due to starvation, while the Israeli occupation army continues its bombing and incursion into the south and central Gaza Strip.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s correspondent reported – today, Friday – that the child Mustafa Hijazi was martyred as a result of malnutrition and dehydration in the northern Gaza Strip, with the crossings continuing to be closed.
This brings the number of children who died due to starvation to 40 since the start of the war in Gaza.
For his part, Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Hossam Abu Safiya, said that symptoms of malnutrition were recorded in more than 200 children in the Gaza Strip, adding that the specter of famine looms on the horizon.
He explained that the northern Gaza Strip does not have food supplies other than flour, and issued a distress call to all international institutions to take the threat of famine seriously.
Catastrophic level
On Wednesday, the World Health Organization warned that many residents of the Strip are exposed to a “catastrophic level of hunger and famine-like conditions.”
In a related context, the Commissioner of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, warned that child survivors in Gaza are suffering from deep trauma, and that the war has stolen their childhood from them.
Lazzarini added, in a post on his account on the X platform, that many children in Gaza were killed or injured, and will have scars for life.
He said, “Without a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, we will have a lost generation.”
Bombardment and incursion
On the other hand, medical sources reported that a child was killed in an artillery shelling by Israeli vehicles penetrating the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City.
For his part, Tel Aviv Tribune’s correspondent reported that there were casualties following an Israeli raid that targeted a house in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
In turn, the Israeli army announced the continuation of its incursion and operations into the Rafah area, south of the Gaza Strip, and other areas in the center of it, claiming that during the past 24 hours it had eliminated a number of militants and discovered many weapons and underground tunnel openings.
In conjunction with the military operation in Rafah, hundreds of Palestinians continued – on Thursday – to flee from the Mawasi Rafah area (west) to the west of the city of Khan Yunis and the Central Governorate.
In the northern Gaza Strip, the Israeli army said that it had monitored – on Thursday evening – several rocket launches towards the settlements adjacent to the Gaza Strip, some of which were intercepted by the Iron Dome while the rest fell in open areas without causing any casualties.
He added that the launch sites that were used to carry out the attacks were attacked and destroyed by air and artillery bombardment, and a weapons depot that was located in the area was also attacked.
On May 6, the Israeli army announced the start of a military operation in Rafah, ignoring international warnings about its repercussions on the lives of the displaced people in the city, while the next day it took control of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has been waging a war on Gaza that has left more than 122,000 Palestinians dead or wounded, and more than 10,000 missing.
