Israel sends tanks into Gaza's Deir Al-Balah, raising concerns among hostages' families
Gaza medics said at least three Palestinians were killed and several were wounded in tank shelling that hit eight houses and three mosques in the area, and which came a day after the military ordered residents to leave, saying it planned to fight Hamas militants.
The raid and bombardment pushed dozens of families who had remained to flee and head west towards the coastal area of Deir Al-Balah and nearby Khan Younis.
In Khan Younis, earlier on Monday, an Israeli airstrike killed at least five people, including a man, his wife, and their two children, in a tent, medics said.
There was no immediate Israeli comment on the Deir Al-Balah and Khan Younis incidents.
Israel's military said it had not entered the districts of Deir Al-Balah subject to the evacuation order during the current conflict and that it was continuing "to operate with great force to destroy the enemy's capabilities and terrorist infrastructure in the area."
More: Israel fire kills dozens more aid seekers in Gaza, medics say, as hunger worsens
Israeli sources have said the reason the army has so far stayed out is that they suspect Hamas might be holding hostages there. At least 20 of the remaining 50 hostages in captivity in Gaza are believed to be still alive.
Families of the hostages expressed their concern for their relatives and demanded an explanation from the army of how it would protect them.
HUNGER CRISIS
The military escalation comes as Gaza health officials warned of potential "mass deaths" in the coming days due to mounting hunger, which has killed at least 19 people since Saturday, according to the territory's health ministry.
Health officials said hospitals were 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 because of hunger.
More: At least 32 killed by Israeli fire while seeking aid in Gaza, hospital says
At least 67 people were killed by Israeli fire on Sunday as they waited for UN aid trucks to enter Gaza.
Israel's military said its troops had fired warning shots towards a crowd of thousands of people in northern Gaza to remove what it said was "an immediate threat."
It said initial findings suggested reported casualty figures were inflated, and it "certainly does not intentionally target humanitarian aid trucks."
The new raid and escalating number of fatalities appeared to be complicating ceasefire talks between Hamas and Israel that are being mediated by Qatar and Egypt, with U.S. backing.
A Hamas official told Reuters on Sunday that the militant group was angered over the mounting deaths and the hunger crisis in the enclave, and that this could badly affect ceasefire talks underway in Qatar.
Israel and Hamas are engaged in indirect talks in Doha aimed at reaching a 60-day truce and hostage deal, although there has been no sign of breakthrough.
UNRWA, the U.N. refugee agency dedicated to Palestinians, said in a post on X on Monday, it was receiving desperate messages from Gaza warning of starvation, including from its own staff as food prices have increased 40-fold.
"Meanwhile, just outside Gaza, stockpiled in warehouses UNRWA has enough food for the entire population for over three months. Lift the siege and let aid in safely and at scale," it said.
Israel's military said on Sunday that it "views the transfer of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip as a matter of utmost importance, and works to enable and facilitate its entry in coordination with the international community."
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
The Israeli military campaign against Hamas in Gaza has since killed more than 58,000 Palestinians, according to health officials, displaced almost the entire population and plunged the enclave into a humanitarian crisis.
(Reporting and writing by Nidal al-Mughrabi, Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
No meals, fainting nurses, dwindling baby formula: Starvation haunts Gaza hospitals
After months of warnings, international agencies, experts and doctors say starvation is now sweeping across Gaza amid restrictions on aid imposed by Israel for months. At least 56 Palestinians died this month of starvation in the territory, nearly half of the total of such deaths since the war began 22 months ago, according to data released Saturday by the Gaza Health Ministry. As starvation rises, medical institutions and staff, already struggling to treat war wounds and illness, are now grappling with rising cases of malnourishment. Advertisement Weak and dizzy, medics are passing out in the wards, where colleagues revive them with saline and glucose drips. Persistently short of basic tools such as antibiotics and painkillers, doctors are also running out of the special intravenous drips used to feed depleted patients. In all four hospitals, the doctors described how they are increasingly unable to save malnourished babies and are instead forced to simply manage their decline. The babies are too weak to be flooded with nutrients, which could overload their system and cause them to suffer 'refeeding syndrome,' which could kill them. Advertisement In some cases, the fluids that the doctors can safely give to the babies are not enough to prevent them from dying. 'I have seen ones that are imminently about to pass away,' said Dr. Ambereen Sleemi, an American surgeon who has been volunteering since early July at the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza. The babies were brought to the hospital 'starving and malnourished,' Sleemi said in a phone interview Friday, 'and they haven't been able to get them back from the brink.' Dr. Nick Maynard, a British surgeon who volunteered at the same hospital until Wednesday, described the shock of seeing a skeletal infant who looked only days old, but was in fact 7 months. 'The expression 'skin and bones' doesn't do it justice,' Maynard said in a phone interview Friday. 'I saw the severity of malnutrition that I would not have thought possible in a civilized world. This is man-made starvation being used as a weapon of war and it will lead to many more deaths unless food and aid is let in immediately.' Asked for comment, COGAT, the Israeli military department that oversees aid to Gaza, said it 'continues to work in coordination with international actors to allow and facilitate the continued entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, in accordance with international law.' Late on Saturday night, the Israeli military began to drop airborne aid over northern Gaza, and said it would pause its military activity for several hours a day in key areas to make it easier to deliver aid by land. One-third of Palestinians in Gaza are forced to go without food for days in a row, the World Food Program said recently. Of the young children and pregnant women treated at clinics run by Doctors Without Borders in Gaza, roughly one-fourth are suffering from malnutrition, the medical aid group said last week. Advertisement Doctors say that many other people have likely died from different conditions and injuries that could have been cured or healed if the victims had not been so weakened by malnourishment. Starvation is causing more mothers to suffer miscarriages or give birth prematurely, to malnourished babies with weakened immune systems and medical abnormalities. 'The result is a rise in infections, dehydration and even immune collapse in infants,' said Dr. Hani al-Faleet, a pediatric consultant at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza. 'The immediate cause of death in some of these cases is simple: The baby doesn't get enough to eat, and neither does the mother.' Starvation has risen sharply since Israel's total blockade on food aid to Gaza between early March and late May, doctors and rights groups say. While Israel has since allowed food in, it introduced a new method of distribution that is flawed and dangerous, making it almost impossible for Palestinians to find food safely or affordably. Before March, food handouts were mainly distributed under a U.N.-led system from hundreds of points close to where people lived. Now, they are supplied from a handful of sites run by Israeli-backed private American contractors that, for most Palestinians in Gaza, can be reached only by walking for miles through Israeli military lines. Israeli soldiers have killed hundreds of people walking these routes, turning the daily search for food into a deadly trap. Advertisement Some food is still available from shops in Palestinian-run areas, but only at astronomic prices that are unaffordable to the largely unemployed civilian population. A kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, of flour costs up to $30, and a kilogram of tomatoes costs roughly $30; meat and rice are largely unavailable on the open market. That has forced many Palestinians to routinely choose between two often fatal options: risk death by starvation, or risk death by gunfire to reach food aid sites that are likely to have run out of supplies by the time many arrive. Israel publicly says the new aid system is necessary to prevent Hamas from stealing the aid. But Israeli military officials have acknowledged to The New York Times that they have no proof that Hamas has systematically stolen food supplied by the United Nations, the main provider of aid to Gaza during most of the war. Israel says that its soldiers have fired 'warning shots' to quell unrest along the roads leading to the aid sites. Maynard and Sleemi described injuries that indicated soldiers had systematically fired at people's torsos. Israel also blames the United Nations for failing to deliver enough food to alleviate the situation. Israel said Saturday that it had destroyed up to 100 truckloads of food in recent months because aid groups could not distribute the food before it passed its use-by date. U.N. officials say that Israeli restrictions have made it difficult to send convoys through an active war zone. The food shortages add another challenge to an already very difficult environment for doctors. 'Some staff members have collapsed in operating rooms. Others have fainted in emergency wards because they have not received any proper food,' said Dr. Mohammad Abu Salmiya, the director of Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. 'The burden on them is immense.' Advertisement Salam Barghouth, a 3-month-old baby girl treated for malnutrition last week at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, is among the youngest Palestinians failed by the new aid distribution system. Her mother, Hanin Barghouth, 22, is too weak to walk to the new distribution sites. Her father, Akram Barghouth, 27, has never managed to reach the sites before the aid runs out, Hanin Barghouth said. Like most Palestinians, the parents are jobless, rely on donations from relatives and friends and said they survive mostly on falafel balls that cost roughly 10 times their prewar price. As a result, Barghouth regularly skips meals and says she has lost 29 pounds, a fifth of her body weight, since the start of the war. She cannot produce enough breast milk to feed Salam, who was born April 21, after Israel started the blockade. At Salam's birth, according to al-Faleet, her doctor, she weighed roughly 6.6 pounds. Three months later, she weighs only 8.8 -- at least 3 pounds underweight, the doctor said. 'I'm breastfeeding her as much as I can, and when I can't, I give her formula -- but that's only when I have it,' Barghouth said. She is reaching the end of a container of formula that she said cost roughly $120, approximately 2 1/2 times the amount it costs outside Gaza. 'She came into the world during a war,' Barghouth added, 'and I'm fighting every day to keep her alive in it.' While Salam Barghouth can still access medical support in central Gaza, other starving children farther to the north are struggling to find it because aid groups have found it harder to bring supplies to them. Advertisement One of them is Yazan Abu al-Foul, 2, a child living with his family in a damaged building beside a beach in Gaza City. His ribs, spine and hip bones jut from his body. An aunt, Riwaa Abu al-Foul, said Yazan's family cannot find enough food to feed him and hospital staff in his area have told them that they cannot provide him with inpatient care. 'They told us there is a shortage of materials and equipment,' Abu al-Foul said in a phone interview Saturday. Doctors at hospitals in northern, central and southern Gaza described similar hardships in interviews Friday and Saturday. 'There are no nutritional supplements, no vitamins, no premature infant formula, no amino acid intravenous solutions -- nothing,' Abu Salmiya said. 'Their bodies need these basics, and without them they will die.' This article originally appeared in
New York Post
4 hours ago
- New York Post
Viral images of starving Gaza boy don't tell the whole story because he suffers from genetic disorders, critics say
A horrifically emaciated Palestinian child held up by news outlets as the face of starvation in Gaza actually suffers from genetic and other disorders, which much of the coverage glossed over, according to critics. The heart-rending photo of Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq made the rounds on outlets including the New York Times, NBC News, The Guardian, BBC and others as evidence that Israel's war against Hamas has led to the starvation of children in the Palestinian enclave. But pro-Israel group HonestReporting first spotted something the outlets either didn't notice or outright ignored: the boy's older brother, Joud, standing in the background looking like he was in much better condition. Advertisement 5 Palestinian child Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq being held by his mother in Gaza City on July 21, 2025. Photo by Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini/Anadolu via Getty Images 5 A photo of Muhammad went viral last week as alleged evidence of starvation in Gaza. Photo by Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini/Anadolu via Getty Images In a video segment, CNN said Muhammad's own mother revealed that he suffers from a 'muscle disorder' for which he receives specialized nutrition and physical therapy, saying he was 'happy' and able to 'sit upright' when they were provided. Advertisement Pro-Israel journalist David Collier said little Muhammad has 'cerebral palsy, hypoxemia, and was born with a serious genetic disorder,' citing a May 2025 medical report from Gaza. In viral photos, taken on July 22 by Turkey's state-owned Anadolu news agency, Muhammad's spine protrudes from his tiny back as his mother cradles him in her arms. The BBC interviewed the image's photographer, Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim al-Arini, who suggested the photo was representative of the widespread starvation that has taken hold in the Gaza Strip. 5 Muhammad suffers from genetic disorders and other issues including cerebral palsy and hypoxemia, according to a report. Photo by Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini/Anadolu via Getty Images Advertisement 5 Muhammad's mother told CNN that he has a 'muscle disorder' that requires physical therapy and specialized nutrition. Photo by Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini/Anadolu via Getty Images The Guardian captioned a photo of Muhammad as 'facing life-threatening malnutrition,' while the UK's Daily Express described it as 'a horrifying image encapsulating the 'maelstrom of human misery' gripping Gaza.' The Israeli Foreign Ministry says it has allowed around 4,500 aid trucks into Gaza since lifting a blockade in May, and that 700 more are waiting to be picked up by the UN. A UN report earlier this month asserted that that 9% of children screened at health clinics across Gaza are suffering from severe malnutrition — a sharp rise from the 6% found in June. Advertisement 5 The image's photographer Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim al-Arini told the BBC Muhammad represents the situation in Gaza. Anadolu via Getty Images The Hamas-controlled health ministry claims that 20 children have died from malnutrition related causes in the last three weeks. The United Nations has also accused Israel of choking the flow of aid and making Israeli and US-backed aid efforts dangerous for civilians. Palestinians blame Israel for the sluggish pace of deliveries, but the Jewish state has repeatedly retorted that its efforts to allow aid to flow into Gaza must be carefully controlled so Hamas fighters don't intercept the shipments. On Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces said it will be initiating a 'local tactical pause' in military activity to allow more aid to get into Gaza, but that distributing food within Gaza 'lies with the UN and international aid organizations' who they say must 'ensure that the aid does not reach Hamas.'
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
WHO says malnutrition reaching 'alarming levels' in Gaza
Malnutrition rates are reaching "alarming levels" in the Gaza Strip, the World Health Organization warned Sunday, saying the "deliberate blocking" of aid was entirely preventable and had cost many lives. "Malnutrition is on a dangerous trajectory in the Gaza Strip, marked by a spike in deaths in July," the WHO said in a statement. Of the 74 recorded malnutrition-related deaths in 2025, 63 had occurred in July -- including 24 children under five, one child aged over five, and 38 adults, it added. "Most of these people were declared dead on arrival at health facilities or died shortly after, their bodies showing clear signs of severe wasting," the UN health agency said. "The crisis remains entirely preventable. Deliberate blocking and delay of large-scale food, health, and humanitarian aid has cost many lives." Nearly one in five children under five in Gaza City is now acutely malnourished, the WHO said, citing its Nutrition Cluster partners. It said the percentage of children aged six to 59 months suffering from acute malnutrition had tripled in the city since June, making it the worst-hit area in the Palestinian territory. In Khan Yunis and middle Gaza, those rates have doubled in less than a month, it added. "These figures are likely an underestimation due to the severe access and security constraints preventing many families from reaching health facilities," the WHO said. Israel on Sunday began a limited "tactical pause" in military operations to allow the UN and aid agencies to tackle a deepening hunger crisis. But the WHO called for sustained efforts to "flood" the Gaza Strip with diverse, nutritious food, and for the expedited delivery of therapeutic supplies for children and vulnerable groups, plus essential medicines and supplies. "This flow must remain consistent and unhindered to support recovery and prevent further deterioration", the Geneva-based agency said. rjm/jj
