At least 10 more Palestinians have starved to death in the besieged Gaza Strip, health officials say, as a wave of hunger crashes over the enclave.
The latest starvation deaths bring the death toll from malnutrition since Israel’s war began in October 2023 to 111, most of them in recent weeks.
At least 100 other Palestinians, including 34 aid seekers, were killed in Israeli attacks over the past 24 hours, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said on Wednesday.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said that 21 children under the age of five were among those who died of malnutrition so far this year. It said it had been unable to deliver any food for nearly 80 days, between March and May, and that a resumption of food deliveries was still far below what is needed.
In a statement, 111 organisations, including Mercy Corps, the Norwegian Refugee Council and Refugees International, said that “mass starvation” was spreading even as tonnes of food, clean water and medical supplies sit untouched just outside Gaza, where aid groups are blocked from accessing them.
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, said that “hunger has become as deadly as the bombs. Families are no longer asking for enough, they are asking for anything”.
He said that Gaza residents have described “a slow, painful death playing out in real time, an engineered famine that the Israeli military has orchestrated”.
Israel cut off all goods from entering the territory in March, but has allowed in a trickle of aid starting in May, mostly distributed by the controversial United States-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
The United Nations and aid groups trying to deliver food to Gaza say Israel, which controls everything that comes in and out, is choking delivery, while Israeli troops have shot dead hundreds of Palestinians close to aid distribution points since May.
“We have a minimum set of requirements to be able to operate inside Gaza,” Ross Smith, the director of emergencies at the UN World Food Programme, said. “One of the most important things I want to emphasise is that we need to have no armed actors near our distribution points, near our convoys.”
Recurring attacks on aid seekers have turned the few remaining hospitals in Gaza “into massive trauma wards”, Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO’s representative for the occupied Palestinian territory, said.
The food scarcity is so extreme that people cannot do their work, including journalists, teachers and even their own staff, Peeperkorn added.
Nour Sharaf, an American doctor from al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, also warned that people “haven’t eaten anything for days and are dying of hunger”.
“Doctors sometimes don’t get food, but they still do their jobs,” she told Al Jazeera, adding that medical workers often work long hours.
Two more journalists killed
Israeli strikes have continued to pound various parts of the enclave, including Gaza City, where the Israeli army said it was “intensifying operations”.
The area has come under intense bombardment in recent days.
Gaza’s Government Media Office also announced the Israeli killing of two Palestinian journalists, Tamer al-Za’anin and Walaa al-Jabari, raising the number of media workers killed in the enclave since October 2023 to 231.
The statement said that al-Za’anin was a photojournalist with various media organisations, while al-Jabari worked as a newspaper editor with several media outlets.
Meanwhile, US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff is heading to Europe for “very sensitive negotiations” over a Gaza ceasefire and captive release deal, the White House said.
During the visit, Witkoff “will meet with key leaders from the Middle East to discuss the ongoing ceasefire proposal to end this conflict in Gaza and to release the hostages”, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told reporters.
Talks on a proposal for a 60-day ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which would include the release of more of the 50 captives still being held in Gaza, are being mediated by Qatar and Egypt, with Washington’s backing.
A Palestinian official close to the Gaza ceasefire talks and the mediation efforts said that Hamas had handed its response on the ceasefire proposal to mediators, declining to elaborate further.
Successive rounds of negotiations have achieved no breakthrough since Israel broke a ceasefire in March.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog told soldiers during a visit to Gaza that “intensive negotiations” about returning the captives held there were under way and that he hoped that they would soon “hear good news”, according to a statement.
A senior Palestinian official earlier said that Hamas might give mediators a response to the latest proposals in Doha later on Wednesday, on the condition that amendments be made to two major sticking points: details on an Israeli military withdrawal and how to distribute aid during a truce.
