At least 10 other Palestinians have hungry to death in the besieged Gaza Strip, according to health officials, while a wave of hunger crashes on the enclave.
The last deaths of famine lead to the number of deaths of malnutrition since the start of the War of Israel in October 2023 at 111, most of them in recent weeks.
At least 100 other Palestinians, including 34 aid seekers, have been killed in Israeli attacks in the last 24 hours, the Gaza Ministry of Health said on Wednesday.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said that 21 children under the age of five were one of those who died in malnutrition this year. He said he could not deliver food for almost 80 days, between March and May, and that a resumption of food deliveries was still well below what is necessary.
In a press release, 111 organizations, including Mercy Corps, the Norwegian Refugee Council and Refugees International, said that “mass famine” spread even if tons of food, drinking water and medical supplies were intact just outside Gaza, where aid groups are prevented from accessing it.
Tareq Abu Azzoum of Tel Aviv Tribune, postponing Deir El-Balah, in the center of Gaza, “said that” hunger has become as fatal as bombs. Families no longer ask enough, they ask for anything. ”
He said that the residents of Gaza described “a slow and painful death playing in real time, an engineering famine that the Israeli army orchestrated”.
Israel cut all the goods of entry into the territory in March, but allowed a aid net from May, mainly distributed by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) controversial.
The United Nations and help groups trying to deliver food to Gaza say that Israel, who controls everything that enters and leaves delivery, while Israeli troops have shot down hundreds of Palestinians to help the distribution points since May.
“We have a minimum set of requirements to be able to operate within Gaza,” said Ross Smith, Emergency Director of the United Nations World Food Program. “One of the most important things I want to emphasize is that we must have no armed actor near our distribution points, near our convoys.”
Recurrent attacks against help seekers have transformed the few remaining hospitals in Gaza “into massive trauma services,” said Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO representative for the occupied Palestinian territory.
Food rarity is so extreme that people cannot do their job, including journalists, teachers and even their own staff, added Peeperkorn.
Nour Sharaf, an American doctor at the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, also warned that people “have eaten nothing for days and have not died of hunger”.
“Doctors sometimes do not have food, but they are still doing their job,” she told Tel Aviv Tribune, adding that medical workers often work for long hours.
Two other journalists killed
Israeli strikes have continued to beat various parts of the enclave, including the city of Gaza, where the Israeli army said it “intensified operations”.
The region has undergone intense bombing in recent days.
The Gaza government’s media office also announced the Israeli murder of two Palestinian journalists, Tamer al-Za’anin and Walaa al-Jabari, increasing the number of media workers killed in the enclave since October 2023 to 231.
The press release indicates that Al-Za’anin was a photojournalist with various media organizations, while Al-Jabari worked as editor with several media.
Meanwhile, the American envoy of the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, heads for Europe for “very sensitive negotiations” on a cease-fire contract of Gaza and a liberation in captivity, said the White House.
During the visit, Witkoff “will meet key leaders from the Middle East to discuss the current cease-fire proposal to end this conflict in Gaza and release the hostages,” the White House spokesman Karoline Leavitt told journalists.
The talks on a 60-day cease-fire proposal between Israel and Hamas, which would include the release of more than 50 captives in Gaza, are mediated by Qatar and Egypt, with the support of Washington.
A Palestinian official close to the ceasefire talks in Gaza and mediation efforts said Hamas had given his response to the mediators, refusing more.
The series of successive negotiations have not managed to intervene since Israel broke a cease-fire in March.
Israeli president Isaac Herzog told soldiers during a visit to Gaza that “intensive negotiations” about the return of the captives who were underway and that he hoped that they would soon hear good news, “said a statement.
A senior Palestinian official declared earlier that Hamas could give the mediators a response to the latest Doha proposals later Wednesday, provided that modifications were made to two major snacks: details on an Israeli military withdrawal and how to distribute aid during a truce.