PNN – The United Nations and its affiliated organizations announced that hunger in Gaza has reached unprecedented and catastrophic levels, reporting that people here have not eaten anything for days, and that children are screaming from extreme hunger and dying in front of their families.
According to the report of Pakistan News Network, in the shadow of the cruel siege of the Israeli regime against the Gaza Strip for the past few months, along with the brutal attacks against the Strip, hunger and malnutrition in Gaza have reached unprecedented levels, and international organizations have sounded the alarm about the mass death of the residents of the Strip due to hunger.
Children who sleep on empty stomachs and die in front of their parents
The United Nations has warned about the lives of tens of thousands of women and children in Gaza and announced that they need urgent medical attention. Meanwhile, due to the siege and devastating war of the Zionist regime against Gaza, first aid has become very scarce in this strip, and medical sources in Gaza last night reported an unprecedented increase in the deaths of infants and children due to hunger and severe malnutrition, announcing that at least three infants lost their lives due to hunger in less than 24 hours last week.
Mahmoud Basal, spokesman for the Gaza Civil Defense Department, stated in an interview with AFP: These painful deaths are not due to direct injuries from the bombing, but rather as a result of severe malnutrition, a lack of milk, and a lack of basic healthcare.
Ziad Musleh, a 45-year-old Palestinian citizen who was displaced from the northern Gaza Strip to the Nuseirat camp in the center of the Strip, said: We are all dying and our children are starving before our eyes, they are crying for a morsel of food, they are sleeping in pain and on an empty stomach, and we adults are unable to even move due to extreme hunger, and even salt and fresh water have been cut off for more than a week.
Painful scenes of children standing in long lines with empty pots
An AFP correspondent reported yesterday that at a food distribution point inside a UN-run school in the Nussirat camp, which is now a refugee center, children with pale faces and very thin and emaciated bodies were standing in long lines banging on empty pots, and these scenes are very painful.
There is nothing here and we are constantly hungry and if there is any food, I keep it for my children, said Umm Sameh Abu Zainah, a mother of several children whose body is completely depleted from hunger. I suffer from high blood pressure and diabetes and have lost 35 kilograms due to hunger.
Complete collapse of the food system in the Gaza Strip
The United Nations and international humanitarian agencies have warned of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in Gaza, saying the strip’s food system has completely collapsed, leading to skyrocketing prices. The World Food Program warned in early July that the price of flour had risen 3,000 times compared to before the war.
Carl Skau, the director of the World Food Program, announced after visiting Gaza: The current situation in Gaza is the worst I have ever seen in my life, I met a father who had lost 25 kilograms in two months due to hunger. While there is a huge amount of food left behind at the Gaza crossings, people here are hungry every day and dying of hunger.
Dangerous malnutrition of pregnant mothers
Doctors without Borders also announced: The malnutrition cases that our teams are seeing in Gaza are at an all-time high. In addition to the huge consequences for their health and that of their fetuses, malnutrition among pregnant mothers leads to premature births, and the neonatal intensive care unit is so overcrowded that we are putting 4 or 5 babies in one incubator.
Amin Wafi, a 10-year-old Palestinian child from Khan Yunis, says in tears: I am very hungry. I always tell my father that I want food, but he cannot provide me with food. I want to eat and drink water like before the war, but our house is completely destroyed. I am afraid of dying of hunger.
Gazans are being massacred in aid lines
The World Food Program also announced in a statement to this effect that large crowds of Gazans waiting for aid at American-Israeli centers are being targeted by tanks, snipers, and other military equipment of the Israeli army, and are being shot to death while trying to obtain food and escape starvation.
The UN agency reported that on Saturday, a convoy of 25 trucks carrying food aid was moving from the Zikim crossing to the northern Gaza Strip, and a large crowd of civilians were targeted by fire while waiting to receive the aid, killing some and wounding others.
The UN agency emphasized: The people of Gaza are risking their lives for a bite of food, and many of them are being shot.
The government information office in the Gaza Strip reported on Sunday that the number of Palestinians who were martyred near the so-called American-Zionist aid distribution centers, which are in fact death traps, has reached 995, according to official figures, the number of injured has reached 6,011, and the number of missing has reached 45.