The World Health Organization has said the population of Gaza is “starving to death” due to the restrictions imposed on humanitarian aid in the besieged Palestinian enclave.
Nearly five months into Israel’s air and ground assault on the Gaza Strip and resulting mass displacement, acute shortages of food have led to what the United Nations is describing as a nutrition crisis, part of a wider humanitarian catastrophe.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Sunday that 15 children had died of malnutrition or dehydration at Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, the part of the enclave where the lack of food is most extreme.
An estimated 8,000 patients need evacuation out of the Gaza Strip, the World Health Organisation has said, voicing frustration that few have so far been transferred outside the besieged territory.
The WHO said moving such patients out of Gaza would relieve some of the strain on the medics and hospitals that are struggling to keep functioning in the besieged enclave.
“We estimate that 8,000 Gazans need to be referred outside Gaza,” Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO representative in the Palestinian territories, told a press briefing in Geneva via video-link from Jerusalem.
Deliveries of food aid to the whole of Gaza are falling far short of what is needed, and the problem is worse in the north because the only crossings where Israel allows trucks to pass are in the south. Some aid trucks have been seized by desperate crowds before they reach the north.
“The sense of helplessness and despair among parents and doctors in realising that lifesaving aid, just a few kilometres away, is being kept out of reach, must be unbearable,” said Adele Khodr, UNICEF regional director for the Middle East and North Africa.
In its latest situation report, dated March 1, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said an average of about 97 trucks a day had been entering Gaza in February, down from about 150 in January and well short of the 500-a-day target.
U.N. agencies and humanitarian groups have blamed the shortfall on Israel’s actions, including the closure of land crossings into northern Gaza, ongoing military operations and a complex system of Israeli checks of items bound for Gaza.
