One million children starving in Gaza as 73 civilians killed in aid 'death traps'
"Israeli authorities are starving civilians in Gaza, among them one million children," UNRWA said in a statement posted on X, calling for an immediate end to the blockade and demanding unfettered access to deliver food and medical supplies.
Two children — a four-year-old girl and a three-month-old infant — died in the last 24 hours in Gaza due to hunger and severe malnutrition, raising the number of children starved to death in Gaza to 71 amid Israeli blockade, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
The ministry warned that Gaza is experiencing a "real state of famine," marked by a severe shortage of basic food supplies and a widespread surge in malnutrition, amid the near-total collapse of the healthcare system.
For its part, UN humanitarian agencies confirmed that the rates of malnutrition are rapidly increasing, spreading across the Gaza Strip.
Last week, UNICEF reported that 112 children are being admitted to Gaza's hospitals each day for treatment of acute malnutrition and severe wasting.
At least 620 people have already died from hunger, including 70 children, since June alone.
UNRWA has meanwhile screened over 242,000 children in the agency's clinics and medical points across the war-torn strip, covering over half the children under age five in Gaza. One in 10 children screened is malnourished.
Moreover, hospitals in Gaza are receiving a growing number of fainting cases due to severe hunger that is exhausting the citizens.
According to Al Jazeera correspondent Anas Elsharif, medical facilities are overwhelmed with people of all ages collapsing from hunger and exhaustion.
"People are collapsing in the streets from hunger," Elsharif said, describing how he and his crew are also suffering from severe food deprivation, trembling from fatigue, and fighting off fainting spells.
Death traps
Deaths of civilians seeking aid have become a regular occurrence as the Israeli army continues targeting crowds facing chronic shortages of food and other essentials near aid centres.
In the latest aid massacres, Israeli forces opened fire on Sunday on a crowd of Palestinians waiting to collect humanitarian aid, killing at least 73, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Qasem Abu Khater, 36, told AFP he had rushed to the Al-Sudaniya area of Gaza City in the hope of getting a bag of flour, joining a "desperate" crowd of thousands.
"There was deadly overcrowding and pushing -- women, men, and children," said Khater, who was displaced from Jabalia, north of the city.
"It felt like we were no longer alive, like we had no souls left. The tanks were firing shells randomly at us and Israeli sniper soldiers were shooting as if they were hunting animals in a forest," he added.
"Dozens of people were martyred right before my eyes and no one could save anyone."
Civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that "Israeli forces opened fire on civilians waiting for aid" and that "dozens" were wounded.
More than 900 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces while attempting to reach aid centres run by the US-Israel-backed "Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), according to the Palestinian health ministry.
UN agencies have condemned the US and Israel-backed food distribution system, with one official calling it "an abomination" and "a death trap".
Most established aid organisations and the UN have refused to work with GHF, saying it fails to meet core humanitarian principles and citing concerns that its limited distribution points in the south of the strip would further the military goals of Israel to remove Gaza's population from the north.
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