The whole band, with a population of two million inhabitants, could be on the brink of famine because the global food program is short of supplies.
At least 13 Palestinians have been killed since dawn and dozens of others buried under the rubble of a building destroyed during an Israeli air attack against Gaza City.
At least, four victims were killed in a strike in a house in the Sabra district of the city on Saturday, residents forced to dig the ground by hand to reach people buried in debris.
Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for the Civil Defense Agency in Gaza, said that a lack of rescue equipment prevented emergency workers from reaching people buried under the collapsed building bombed by Israel before dawn.
“Our crews cannot reach them due to the lack of necessary machines,” he told the AFP news agency.
Earlier this week, Israeli planes destroyed 40 engineering vehicles that the civil defense teams used to eliminate heavy debris during rescue operations.
The Israeli air raids also struck other parts of the strip on Saturday, notably Al-Mawasi and Khan Younis, while the besieged territory faces the starvation of imminent mass in the middle of a continuous genocide.
After 18 months of the Israeli military invasion which killed more than 51,000 Palestinians, the situation in Gaza “is probably the worst,” warned the United Nations.
Friday, the World Food Program (WFP) said that the whole band, with a population of two million inhabitants, could be on the brink of famine and that the assistant kitchens should “lack food in the coming days”.
The current blockade of Israel did not mean food, fuel or medicine entered Gaza for two months. For many Palestinians in Gaza, community kitchens were their only source of nutrition after Israeli forces have destroyed almost all food production facilities.
PAM has called on the international community to exert pressure on Israel to raise the blockade, saying that more than 116,000 metrics of food aid – enough to feed a million people who can go up to four months – are already positioned for delivery “as soon as the borders reopen”.
Deir El-Balah report on Saturday, Tareq Abu Azzoum of Tel Aviv Tribune said that the humanitarian crisis of the besieged territory “had reached a very unprecedented break point”.
“Civilians really find it difficult to deal with this crisis,” he said.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UNRWA Palestinian refugee agency, said the crisis was “artificial”.
Michael Fakhri, UN rapporteur on the right to food, said that Israel “executes this famine campaign without repercussions”.
The World Health Organization said that the situation was no different for medical supplies, with WHO, chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, pleading on X so that the aid blockade ends.
At least 2,062 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel resumed its fatal campaign against Hamas on March 18, and more than 50,000 since October 7, 2023. The attack on Hamas against Israel killed 1,218 people, mainly civilians.
