AT LEAST 15 people, including four children, died from famine and malnutrition in Gaza yesterday, the Health Ministry reports.
Israeli forces also killed at least 51 Palestinians, including 14 aid seekers, in attacks across Gaza since dawn yesterday – just a day after tanks pushed into southern and eastern parts of Deir el-Balah for the first time.
Gaza’s Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Basil has gone on hunger strike to show the world that Palestinians in Gaza ‘have the right to life’.
‘Our children are starving to death. All we ask is for humanitarian aid to be delivered, without any restriction or conditions,’ he said, adding that the Israel- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has weaponised food, with aid seekers flocking to its sites and then leaving in body bags.
‘The whole world must act, namely the human rights organisations, against the genocide unfolding against the unarmed civilian population in Gaza. The whole world must act, from scholars, preachers, parliamentarians; they all must act, they must stage protests, sit-ins, even hunger strikes.
‘The main purpose for me to go on hunger strike is that I witness children dying from starvation. I see mothers unable to feed their children, doctors and nurses unable to cater for their patients.’
Over the past 24 hours, hospitals in the Gaza Strip have received at least 77 bodies of civilians, as well as 376 people suffering from different injuries following Israeli attacks.
The journalists’ association of Agence France Presse – an international news agency based in France – says the last reporters in Gaza will die without immediate intervention, warning that its colleagues are at risk of starvation.
In a letter released yesterday, and written in French, the journalists’ association said the news agency has been working with freelancers in the territory and that ‘we refuse to see them die’. It describes freelance reporters living in ‘absolute destitution’ with no food, water or sanitation, and regularly risking their lives to report on what is happening in the territory.
Mohammed Abu Salmiya, director of Shifa hospital in Gaza City, said 21 children have died of malnutrition and starvation in the past 72 hours.
Some 900,000 children are suffering from hunger, and 70,000 of them are in a state of malnutrition, he told the BBC. They face alarming numbers of deaths, the doctor warned, with diabetic and kidney patients at particular risk.
Pharmacist, mother and grandmother, Suha Shaath, who lives in a tent with her family and works in Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, said: ‘Gazans are dying a slow death from hunger.
‘Last night I couldn’t sleep because of the sound of a child crying in the neighbouring tent – crying from hunger. His parents couldn’t find anything to feed him or calm him down. Hunger tortures fathers with helplessness and children with the shock that their parents cannot save them.’