More than 100,000 children in the Gaza Strip, including 40,000 infants aged under one, are facing imminent death due to the complete lack of baby formula and nutritional supplements, the government media office in Gaza has warned.
In a statement yesterday, the office described the situation as an unfolding ‘massacre in slow motion’, accusing Israel of deliberately starving Gaza’s youngest population through its continued blockade and closure of all border crossings.
According to the office, mothers have resorted to feeding their babies water for days in the absence of formula, while hospitals and health centres are witnessing a daily surge in cases of acute and life-threatening malnutrition.
Health authorities in Gaza have reported 122 deaths so far due to starvation and malnutrition, including 83 children, amid the near-total collapse of the medical system and a critical shortage of basic food supplies.
Calling the crisis ‘a shocking warning issued in the name of humanity and global conscience’, the media office demanded the immediate entry of baby formula and nutritional supplements, the reopening of all crossings without conditions, the lifting of Israel’s ‘criminal siege’, and urgent international intervention to halt a ‘deliberate extermination campaign against children’.
The office concluded by holding the Israeli government and its international allies ‘fully responsible for a looming crime against humanity’, warning that continued global silence amounts to ‘explicit complicity in the genocide of Gaza’s children’.
Meanwhile, Israel resumed airdrop aid to Gaza yesterday, an Israeli military spokesperson said.
The military also said in a separate statement that designated humanitarian corridors would be established to enable the safe movement of United Nations convoys delivering aid to the Gaza population, and that humanitarian pauses would be implemented in densely populated areas.
“The airdrops will include seven pallets of aid containing flour, sugar, and canned food to be provided by international organisations,” it added.
Palestinian sources confirmed that aid has begun dropping in northern Gaza.
Britain plans to work with partners such as Jordan to airdrop aid and evacuate children requiring medical assistance, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office said yesterday. The office did not give details.
But the head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, warned on social media that airdrops are ‘expensive, inefficient and can even kill starving civilians’ and won’t reverse the increasing starvation or prevent aid diversion.
Israeli air strikes and gunshots killed at least 42 people in Gaza overnight and yesterday, according to Palestinian health officials and the local ambulance service, as starvation deaths continued and ceasefire talks appear to have stalled.
Gunfire killed at least a dozen people waiting for aid trucks close to the Zikim crossing with Israel in the north, said staff at Shifa Hospital, where bodies were taken. Israel’s military said it fired warning shots to distance a crowd ‘in response to an immediate threat’ and it was not aware of any casualties.
Ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas were at a standstill after the US and Israel recalled negotiating teams on Thursday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his government was considering ‘alternative options’ to ceasefire talks. A Hamas official, however, said negotiations were expected to resume next week and described the recall of the Israeli and US delegations as a pressure tactic.
Egypt and Qatar, which mediate alongside the US, called the pause temporary and said talks would resume. They did not say when.
Israel yesterday said more than 250 trucks carrying aid from the UN and other organisations entered Gaza this week. About 600 trucks entered per day during the latest ceasefire that Israel ended in March.
Israel faces growing international pressure. More than two dozen Western-aligned countries and more than 100 charity and human rights groups have called for an end to the war, harshly criticising Israel’s blockade and a new aid delivery model it has rolled out.
More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since May while trying to get food, mostly near the new aid sites run by an American contractor, the UN human rights office says.
The charities and rights groups said even their own staff were struggling to get enough food.
“Stand for Gaza, for silence is a crime, and indifference is a betrayal of humanity,” said Father Issa Thaljieh, a Greek Orthodox priest at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, as religious figures and the mayor gathered to call for prayers to end the war.
- Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said yesterday that recognising the State of Palestine before it is established could be counterproductive.
“I am very much in favour of the State of Palestine but I am not in favour of recognising it prior to establishing it,” Meloni told Italian daily La Repubblica.
“If something that doesn’t exist is recognised on paper, the problem could appear to be solved when it isn’t,” Meloni added.
France’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly in September drew condemnation from Israel and the US, amid the war in Gaza between Israel and.
On Friday, Italy’s foreign minister said recognition of a Palestinian state must occur simultaneously with recognition of Israel by the new Palestinian entity.
A German government spokesperson said on Friday that Berlin was not planning to recognise a Palestinian state in the short term and said its priority now is to make ‘long-overdue progress’ towards a two-state solution.
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