AT LEAST 123 Palestinians, including 21 aid seekers, were killed and 437 injured in Israeli attacks across Gaza in 24 hours, the Gaza Health Ministry reported yesterday afternoon.
In the same time period, at least eight people, including three children, starved to death in the territory, bringing the total count of hunger-related deaths to 235, including 106 children, the ministry said.
Early yesterday, al-Shifa Hospital said seven members of one family, five of them children, were killed when tents were targeted in Tel al-Hawa, in the south of the city.
Al-Ahli Hospital said 10 people were killed in a strike on a house in the Zaytoun area, to the city’s east.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said at least 100 children have died in the enclave due to malnutrition and hunger, while more than 40,000 children have been reported killed or injured due to Israeli attacks.
At least 17,000 children are unaccompanied and separated from their families, and one million minors are deeply traumatised and out of education, he said.
‘Children are children. No one should stay silent when children die, or are brutally deprived of a future, wherever these children are, including in Gaza,’ he concluded.
‘US President Donald Trump must realise that his country is the most complicit in the genocide in Gaza,’ Mary Robinson, ex-president of Ireland, and ex-UN high commissioner for human rights, said yesterday as she visited the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing as part of a delegation from the Elders group of global leaders, founded by former South African President Nelson Mandela in 2007.
A delegation of Hamas leaders is also in Cairo for ‘preliminary talks’ with Egyptian officials, with reports saying that mediators see a window of opportunity in the coming weeks to try to push a deal through.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Egypt Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said Cairo is ‘making great efforts’ with Qatar and the US to revive the earlier phased plan.
‘The main goal is to return to the original proposal – a 60-day ceasefire – along with the release of some hostages and some Palestinian prisoners, and the flow of humanitarian and medical aid into Gaza without obstacles or conditions,’ Abdelatty said.
