As Israel’s punishing blockade of food, water, and other essential aid to the besieged enclave continues into its third month amid relentless bombardment, at least 57 Palestinians have been starved to death in Gaza.
The Israeli-occupied Palestinians continue to use food as a weapon of war, according to Gaza’s government media office, which stated on Saturday that the majority of the victims were children, the sick, and the elderly, and that they were mostly children.
Since March 2, Gaza has been subject to total Israeli blockade, according to video released by Al Jazeera Arabic that shows numerous trucks carrying essential supplies scurrying southward on Saturday along the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, the queue stretching south beyond the city of Arish, which is located 45 kilometers (28 miles) from the Rafah border crossing.
A baby girl named Janan Saleh al-Sakafi, who passed away from malnutrition and dehydration in the Rantisi Hospital in Gaza City on Saturday, was one of the latest victims identified by Al Jazeera’s investigation. Since the start of the year, more than 9, 000 children have been taken into hospitals to receive treatment for acute malnutrition, according to the UN.
Hani Mahmoud, a journalist from Gaza City, claimed he had witnessed heartbreaking scenes of children “looking for whatever leftovers of canned food products” while looking through the trash. He added that the enclave had reached a “critical” point where local organizations were unable to provide food to displaced people and international organizations were running out of supplies.
A Palestinian displaced from Gaza City, Ahmad al-Najjar, told Al Jazeera, “Finding a single meal has become an impossible quest.” People have reported seeing charity after charity declare that they are out of supplies and are shutting down operations because they are unable to provide the population with the needed assistance.
“It’s frustrating and infuriating to have trucks parked on the other side of the fence and people being denied access while the population, even children, is in such dire condition.”
Hospitals are experiencing “acute shortages.”
With only about a week of supplies left, Suhaib al-Hams, the director of the Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah, claimed in a statement that medical services were experiencing “acute shortages in more than 75 percent of essential medicines.”
Without “immediate intervention,” he warned, the majority of the enclave’s medical services would shut down in order to reopen borders and allow access to medical and humanitarian aid. He added that patients who were “slowly dying without treatment every day” needed to be evacuated right away.
The Gaza Strip’s longest continuous blockade has ever been in place, and it comes as Israeli forces continue to bombard the area, injuring 275 people and killing at least 70 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry.
According to reports from Al Jazeera Arabic, two women were killed on Saturday when an Israeli aircraft attacked a home in the town of al-Fakhari near Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
A separate Israeli naval attack off the coast of Gaza City resulted in the deaths of one fisherman and the injury of another.
In an Israeli drone attack on the southern Gazans’ al-Mawasi area, which was once a “safe zone,” two Palestinians were killed later in the day.
Source: Aljazeera
Leave a Reply