Thousands of children in Gaza are at risk of imminent death after a nearly three-month total Israeli blockade on the besieged enclave, which has spread famine, the United Nations relief chief warns.
That has put 14,000 babies at risk of dying in the next 48 hours, Tom Fletcher said in an interview with the BBC on Tuesday.
“We need to flood the Gaza Strip with humanitarian aid,” the UN’s undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs said, describing the situation as “chilling”.
All food, medicine and other life-saving aid had been blocked by Israel from entering Gaza beginning on March 2. As of Monday, a trickle of aid was authorised to enter for the first time since then.
Addressing the European Humanitarian Forum in Brussels on Tuesday, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said relief organisations have run out of words to describe the horrors unfolding in Gaza at Israel’s hands.
“But the worst in all this is that we are confronted with a situation: If there is political will, the war can stop. The siege being imposed on Gaza can be lifted,” Lazzarini said.
Since early March, at least 57 children are reported to have died from malnutrition.
A UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) assessment says more than 93 percent of children in Gaza, or about 930,000, are at risk of famine
UNRWA Director of Health Akihiro Seita added on Tuesday that the situation is getting “exponentially” worse and may soon arrive at a point that is “beyond our control”.
Israel told the UN on Tuesday that it would allow the entry of 100 trucks carrying humanitarian aid, a day after it said it allowed only nine aid trucks into the enclave for the first time in more than 80 days.
Both moves have been roundly slammed for fulfilling only a “drop in the ocean” of the humanitarian needs in Gaza, which has been largely reduced to rubble by Israeli air strikes and ground operations, which were expanded at the weekend.
Israeli attacks continue to kill dozens of Palestinians, including many children, each day while what’s left of infrastructure and aid supplies is being destroyed.
The municipality of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza announced on Tuesday that a major well, the last remaining source of drinking water in the area, was destroyed along with its generator in an Israeli strike.
This comes as more than 100,000 Palestinians have been driven out of their homes and shelters in the past several days alone, according to the UN, and have nowhere safe to go as they face famine.
The Israeli army on Tuesday bombed the Nasser Medical Complex in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis as well, hitting life-saving medical supplies and causing widespread destruction across the hospital’s different facilities, including oxygen lines and a laboratory.
“In northern Gaza, the Indonesian Hospital is under siege by the Israeli military with patients unable to enter or get out,” Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary said, reporting from Deir el-Balah.
“Aside from the Nasser and Indonesian hospitals, two other major hospitals in Gaza, the European and al-Awda, have been bombed and largely put out of service in the past few days,” she added.
Tess Ingram, a UNICEF communications manager, explained to Al Jazeera why a scheme hatched by the United States and Israel to take control of aid distribution in Gaza was unacceptable for the international community.
She said the UN and its international partners had 400 distribution points all over Gaza to help Palestinians whereas now only a “handful” of militarised points in southern Gaza will be used under the US-Israel plan.
“This would mean that people would have to walk a long way to collect a packet that weighs up to 25kg [55lb] and then walk back again,” she said.
Speaking on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emphasised that only a “minimal” amount of aid will be allowed into Gaza for diplomatic and political reasons as international pressure and condemnation is directed at him and his government.
His far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said allowing any aid into Gaza while some Israeli captives taken during the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023, are still held inside the enclave is “a grave mistake hindering our victory”.
As the Israeli military and government continue to promise to “defeat” Hamas, devastating military strikes on the Palestinian territory have intensified.
The Israeli army said on Tuesday afternoon that it attacked 100 targets in Gaza in the preceding 24 hours, claiming they were all “terrorist” targets.
At least 53,573 Palestinians have been killed and 121,688 wounded since the start of the war, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
