GAZA: Gaza faces a grave risk of famine, with one in three people going days without food, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has warned.
UNICEF on Friday urged the international community to act swiftly as conditions continue to deteriorate due to Israel’s genocidal war.
“Today, more than 320,000 young children are at risk of acute malnutrition,” Ted Chaiban, UNICEF’s deputy executive director for humanitarian action and supply operations, said in a statement on Friday following a recent trip to Israel, Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
He said the malnutrition indicator in Gaza has “exceeded the famine threshold”.
“Today, I want to keep the focus on Gaza, because it’s in Gaza where the suffering is most acute and where children are dying at an unprecedented rate,” he said.
“We are at a crossroads, and the choices made now will determine whether tens of thousands of children live or die.”
On Saturday, Atef Abu Khater, a 17-year-old Palestinian, died of malnutrition, a medical source at al-Shifa Hospital told Al Jazeera.
Earlier this week, Khater, who had been in good health before the war in Gaza, was hospitalised in intensive care, according to media reports, which quoted his father as saying he was no longer responding to treatment.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 60,000 Palestinians, more than 18,000 of them children. Many more remain buried under the rubble, most presumed dead.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, the number of deaths from starvation in the territory stands at 162, including 92 children.
The Israeli military last week began a daily “tactical pause” of its military operations in parts of Gaza and established new aid corridors.
US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, also travelled to Gaza on Friday to inspect the GHF aid distribution site, together with Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel.
The diplomats “spent over five hours inside Gaza”, Witkoff said in a post on X, accompanied by a photo of himself wearing a protective vest and meeting staff at a distribution site.
He added that the purpose of the trip was to “help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza”.
Meanwhile, several Western and Arab governments began carrying out aid airdrops in Gaza earlier this week, to feed more than two million inhabitants. But aid agencies have said they are deeply sceptical that airdrops could deliver enough food safely to tackle a deepening hunger crisis in Gaza. Al Jazeera
One in three Palestinians in Gaza going days without food, UNICEF says
