The head of Gaza’s largest hospital has said 21 children have died due to malnutrition and starvation in the Palestinian territory in the past three days, while Israel pressed a devastating assault.
Gaza’s population of more than two million people is facing severe shortages of food and other essentials, with residents frequently killed as they try to collect humanitarian aid at a handful of distribution points.
“Twenty-one children have died due to malnutrition and starvation in various areas across the Gaza Strip,” Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the director of Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza, told reporters.
Mr Abu Salmiya said new cases of malnutrition and starvation were arriving at Gaza’s remaining functioning hospitals “every moment” warning there could be “alarming numbers” of deaths due to starvation.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres called Gaza a “horror show” in a speech earlier, with “a level of death and destruction without parallel in recent times”.
After talks to extend a six-week ceasefire broke down, Israel imposed a full blockade on Gaza on 2 March this year, allowing nothing in until trucks were again permitted to enter at a trickle in late May.
However, stocks accumulated during the ceasefire have gradually depleted, leaving the territory’s inhabitants experiencing the worst shortages since the start of the war in October 2023.
Read more: Starving Gaza children say they wish to die, charity says
Chaotic scenes have become frequent at aid distribution areas since the US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation effectively sidelined a vast UN aid delivery network in Gaza.
The UN said Israeli forces had killed over 1,000 Palestinians trying to get food aid since the GHF began its operations in late May, with most near the foundation’s sites.
Israeli military spokesman Nadav Shoshani posted a video online this evening, showing what he said was “950 trucks worth of aid currently waiting in Gaza for international organisations to pick up and distribute”.
“This is after Israel facilitated the aid entry into Gaza,” he wrote on X.
Earlier, Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes had killed 15 people, after the World Health Organization said Israel attacked its facilities amid its expanding ground operations.
Palestinians queue to receive a hot meal at a charity kitchen in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza
Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that Israeli strikes on the Al-Shati camp west of Gaza City had killed at least 13 people and wounded more than 50.
Most of Gaza’s population has been displaced at least once during the conflict and the Al-Shati camp, on the Mediterranean coast, hosts thousands of people displaced from the north in tents and makeshift shelters.
Raed Bakr, 30, lives with his three children and said he heard “a massive explosion” at about 1.40am this morning (11.40pm Irish yesterday), which blew their tent away.
“I felt like I was in a nightmare. Fire, dust, smoke and body parts flying through the air, dirt everywhere. The children were screaming,” Mr Bakr, whose wife was killed last year, told AFP.
Reports of the latest death toll came as the Roman Catholic church’s most senior cleric in the Holy Land, Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa, said the humanitarian situation in Gaza was “morally unacceptable”.
Mr Pizzaballa spent three days in Gaza after an Israeli strike on the territory’s only Catholic church last Thursday which killed three people.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus accused Israeli troops of entering its staff residence, and forcing women and children to evacuate, as they handcuffed, stripped and interrogated male staff at gunpoint.
Israeli forces meanwhile expanded ground operations in Deir el-Balah following intense shelling of the area in central Gaza.
The civil defence agency’s Bassal said two people were killed in Deir el-Balah.
The Israeli military said later its troops “identified shots being fired toward them in the Deir al-Balah area, and responded toward the area from which the shooting originated”.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that between 50,000 and 80,000 people were living in the area, which until now had been considered relatively safe.
Some 30,000 were living in displacement sites.
Displaced Palestinian children waiting for food in a tent in Yarmouk Camp in Gaza City
OCHA said nearly 88% of Gaza was now either under evacuation orders or within Israeli militarised zones, forcing the population of 2.4 million into an ever-shrinking space.
Despite what Guterres described as “devastation … upon devastation”, Israeli far-right leaders met in Jerusalem to discuss plans for redeveloping Gaza as a tourist-friendly “riviera”, with a permanent Jewish presence.
A “master plan” presented at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, foresees the construction of housing for 1.2 million new Jewish residents and the development of industrial and agricultural zones, as well as tourism complexes on the coast.
Palestinians mourn for their relatives those who were killed in Israeli airstrike in al Shati Camp in Gaza
Israeli attacks kill 130 Palestinians in past 24 hours – ministry update
Israeli tanks pushed into southern and eastern districts of the Gazan city of Deir al-Balah for the first time yesterday.
The area is packed with Palestinians displaced during more than 21 months of Israeli attacks on Gaza, hundreds of whom fled west or south after Israel issued an evacuation order.
Israel said it sought to destroy infrastructure and capabilities of the militant group Hamas.
Tank shelling in the area hit houses and mosques, killing at least three Palestinians and wounding several others, local medics said.
“UN staff remain in Deir al-Balah, and two UN guesthouses have been struck, despite parties having been informed of the locations of UN premises, which are inviolable. These locations – as with all civilian sites – must be protected, regardless of evacuation orders,” UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said.
Read more: WHO says its staff residence, warehouse in central Gaza attacked
The World Health Organization said its staff residence and main warehouse in Deir al-Balah was attacked yesterday.
Two WHO staff and two family members were detained by the Israeli military, said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, adding that three were later released while one staff member remained in detention.
To the south in Khan Younis, an Israeli airstrike killed at least five people, including a husband and wife and their two children in a tent, medics said.
Health officials warn of ‘mass deaths’ from hunger in coming days
Gaza health officials have warned of potential “mass deaths” in coming days from hunger.
Health officials say hospitals have been running out of fuel, food aid and medicine, risking a halt to vital operations.
Health Ministry spokesperson Khalil Al-Deqran said medical staff have been depending on one meal a day and that hundreds of people flock to hospitals every day, suffering from fatigue and exhaustion.
The US said that it was sending an envoy to the Middle East for talks that aim to finalize a “corridor” for aid to war-ravaged Gaza, where authorities said people are dying of starvation.
Steve Witkoff, US President Donald Trump’s negotiator, is traveling to the region for new talks, State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters.
Mr Witkoff comes with “a strong hope that we will come forward with another ceasefire as well as a humanitarian corridor for aid to flow, that both sides have in fact agreed to,” she said.
Ms Bruce declined to give further details on his itinerary or the corridor, saying that he was traveling around Gaza.
She did not say how the diplomacy would relate to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an initiative backed by Israel and the United States that has seen scenes of troops firing on hungry Palestinians racing for food.
In southern Gaza, the Health Ministry said an Israeli undercover unit had yesterday detained Marwan Al-Hams, head of Gaza’s field hospitals, in a raid that killed a local journalist and wounded another outside a field medical facility run by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
An ICRC spokesperson said the ICRC had treated patients injured in the incident, but did not comment further on their status. It said it was “very concerned about the safety and security” around the field hospital.
Israel has raided and attacked hospitals across Gaza during the war, accusing Hamas of using them for military purposes, an accusation the group denies. Sending undercover forces to carry out arrests is rare.
The incursion into Deir al-Balah and the growing number of deaths appeared to be complicating efforts to secure a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel in talks mediated by Qatar and Egypt, with US backing.
A Hamas official said the militant group was angered by the mounting death toll and hunger crisis, and said it could affect the talks on a 60-day truce and hostage deal.
