More than 70 Palestinians killed seeking aid, says Gaza Health Ministry
The Israeli military now controls around 80 per cent of Gaza's territory according to the UN.
This includes militarised zones and areas under forced evacuation orders.
And now for the first time the Israel Defense Forces have issued evacuation orders for Deir Balah, warning of an imminent attack.
A warning: this report contains distressing scenes.
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ITV News
19 minutes ago
- ITV News
Starvation is 'knocking on every door' in Gaza, as deaths from malnutrition soar
Over 100 people have died within days of each other from starvation in Gaza, according to health officials, as experts warn that one in four are facing famine-like conditions. Gaza's Health Ministry said on Tuesday that 101 people, including 80 children, had died in recent days from starvation. The ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals, did not provide precise diagnoses, but people in hunger crises often die from a combination of malnutrition, illness and deprivation. The figures come as the United Nations Secretary General António Guterres warned that starvation is 'knocking on every door' in Gaza, as he called the situation a "horror show". Gaza's population is estimated to be around 2.1 million. World Food Programme assessments indicate that a quarter of the population is facing famine-like conditions, with almost 100,000 women and children suffering from severe acute malnutrition, and requiring treatment as soon as possible. A third of Gaza's population is estimated not go without food for multiple days in a row. Speaking at the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday, Guterres said: "We need look no further than the horror show in Gaza. In the level of death and destruction without parallel in recent times. "Malnourishment is soaring. Starvation is knocking on every door. Now we are seeing the last gasp of a humanitarian system built on humanitarian principles. "Around the world, we see an utter disregard for, if not (an) outright violation of, international law." UN officials, aid groups and experts have warned for months that Palestinians in Gaza are on the brink of famine, although difficulties with obtaining precise data have made agencies unable to decipher if they are already experiencing one. Israel eased an 11-week blockade on aid getting into the territory in May, but aid groups say only a trickle of assistance is getting into Gaza. The distribution of aid has been complicated by a controversial Israeli-backed US-run contractor called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), and a breakdown of law and order within the territory. Over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed trying to receive aid since the blockade was lifted, according to the UN human rights office. The majority of these have been in the vicinity of GHF sites, where 766 are reported to have been killed. The other deaths were around UN convoys or other aid sites. Witnesses to killings around aid sites often attribute them to Israeli fire, although Israeli forces state they have only fired warning shots around distribution areas. In a statement, GHF rejected what it said were 'false and exaggerated statistics' from the UN, saying the deadliest incidents have been linked to UN aid convoys. On Monday, Foreign Secretary David Lammy and his counterparts from 24 other nations, including France, Canada and Australia, urged Israel to lift restrictions on the flow of aid into Gaza in a joint statement, condemning the current aid model. He alleged a culture of 'just winging it' and said he was left 'traumatised' by some of what he witnessed. In a statement to ITV News, the GHF rejected the claims made by the contractor, adding: "It is an active war zone in Gaza. It's also one of the most complex operating environments in the world. The legacy models of aid delivery have failed to adequately meet the overwhelming needs of the population. "That's why GHF exists and why we are committed to constant innovation to meet President Trump's call for new, effective ways to get aid into Gaza while the UN's trucks get looted and overrun and their aid is not making it into the strip." Analysis of UN data by the charity Islamic Relief found that July has been the deadliest month in Gaza for 18 months, with one person dying every 12 minutes. The charity found that, on average, 119 Palestinians have been killed daily in July, the highest rate since January 2024, and more than 401 Palestinians a day have been wounded. Waseem Ahmad, Chief Executive of Islamic Relief Worldwide, says world leaders must urgently take action.'The rate of killing is accelerating every day that world leaders fail to act," he said. "We are witnessing people massacred just for trying to get food, water or medicine. We're seeing babies and young children starve to death because Israel is blocking humanitarian aid. "We're seeing starving families ordered to leave their homes, then bombed in the tents where they are told to shelter." Islamic Relief estimates that, in total, around 9% of Gaza's entire pre-war population have now been killed or wounded, with over 59,000 people dead and over 140,000 wounded - many with life-changing injuries such as loss of limbs.
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Gaza health ministry says 33 people died from malnutrition in 48 hours
At least 33 Palestinians, including 12 children, have died as a result of malnutrition across the Gaza Strip in the past 48 hours, the Hamas-run health ministry has deaths of 11 adults and four children were reported over the past day, a spokesman told the came as UN Secretary General António Guterres told the UN Security Council that "malnutrition is soaring" and "starvation is knocking on every door" in 2.1 million population is facing grave shortages of basic supplies, he said, and Israel has an obligation to facilitate humanitarian assistance by the UN and its partners. Israel, which controls Gaza's crossings, has insisted that it acts in accordance with international law and facilitates the entry of aid while ensuring it does not reach journalists, including the BBC, are blocked by Israel from entering Gaza independently, so it is difficult to verify the number of reported malnutrition footage filmed by a local Palestinian journalist working for the BBC at al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah showed the emaciated body of a man called Ahmed al-Hasanat, who doctors said had died from malnutrition on Tuesday. Health officials said a 13-year-old boy, Abdul Hamid al-Ghalban, also died in the southern city of Khan Younis. Photos from AFP and Anadolu news agencies showed the teenager's small body being prepared for burial at Nasser hospital and then carried in a white media meanwhile posted a video showing the body of a six-week-old boy, Yousef al-Safadi, who health officials said died at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City due to US-based medical humanitarian group MedGlobal also said in a statement that its nutritional teams in Gaza had witnessed five severely malnourished children, aged between three months and four years old, die within the past three days."This is a deliberate and human-made disaster," MedGlobal's executive director, Joseph Belliveau, said. "Those children died because there is not enough food in Gaza and not enough medicines, including IV fluids and therapeutic formula, to revive them."MedGlobal said that since the beginning of July, cases of acutely malnourished, mainly children, had nearly tripled at its facilities, indicating a widespread food UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) also said that it was receiving "SOS" messages from its staff in Gaza, saying they were desperately short of food. Some Unrwa doctors and aid workers had reportedly been fainting while working, due to hunger and exhaustion, it this week, the World Food Programme (WFP) reported that malnutrition was surging, with 90,000 women and children in urgent need of treatment, and that nearly one person in three was not eating for noted that food aid was the only way for most people to access any food because prices in local markets had skyrocketed. It said a 1kg (2.2lb) bag of flour now cost over $100 (£74).The WFP called for a "massive scale-up in food aid distribution" and said it had food supplies nearby and teams on the ground ready to UN says a minimum of 600 aid lorries a day need to enter Gaza. However, the UN Organisation for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said it was only permitted to bring in 1,600 lorries of aid between May and July - an average of around 27 per Israeli foreign ministry said on Sunday that it had allowed 4,400 lorry loads of aid to enter Gaza over the past two months, and that 700 loads were waiting to be picked up by UN agencies from crossing UN has said that it struggles to pick up and distribute supplies because of the ongoing hostilities, Israeli restrictions on humanitarian movements, and fuel shortages. Israel imposed a total blockade of aid deliveries to Gaza at the start of March and resumed its military offensive against Hamas two weeks later, collapsing a two-month ceasefire. It said it wanted to put pressure on the armed group to release its remaining Israeli the blockade was partially eased in late May, amid warnings of a looming famine from global experts, the shortages of food, medicine and fuel have grown have also been almost daily reports of Palestinians being killed while seeking aid since Israel and the US helped to establish a new aid system to bypass the existing one overseen by the new system, run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), started at the end of May, and uses US private security contractors to hand out food parcels from sites inside Israeli military says the system prevents supplies from being stolen by the UN and its partners have refused to co-operate with the GHF, saying it is unsafe and violates the humanitarian principles of impartiality, neutrality, and Tuesday, the UN human rights office said that it had recorded the killing of 766 people by the Israeli military in the vicinity of the GHF's aid sites since they began operating eight weeks ago. Another 288 killings had been recorded along routes of UN and other aid convoys."We are seeing the last gasp of a humanitarian system built on humanitarian principles," António Guterres told the UN Security Council. "This system is being denied the conditions to function, denied the space to deliver, denied the safety to save lives."He also said that the Israeli military's intensifying operations and evacuation orders in Deir al-Balah meant "devastation is being layered upon devastation".On Monday night, the World Health Organization (WHO) said the Israeli ground operation in Deir al-Balah had compromised its efforts to continue working, after its staff residence and main warehouse came under Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage. At least 59,106 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's health ministry.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
War in Gaza tests ties between Israel and traditional European allies
Britain threatened Tuesday to take further action against Israel if it does not agree to end the war in Gaza, a day after two dozen mostly European countries condemned Israel's restrictions on aid shipments into the territory and the killings of hundreds of Palestinians trying to reach food. Despite the increasingly strong words, many are skeptical that Israel will yield to such pressure without more significant punitive action — and especially without the backing of Germany and the U.S., Israel's strongest Western allies. Outrage over Israel's actions in Gaza has grown in Europe as images of suffering Palestinians have driven protests in London, Berlin, Brussels and other capitals. More recently, the almost daily killings of Palestinians while seeking aid have tested the EU's friendly relationship with Israel like never before. But Europe remains divided on its stance toward Israel, and its limited sanctions and condemnations so far have had little effect. Here's a look at what Europe can do or has done — and why it hasn't done more. EU reviews its ties with Israel over Gaza The EU has been reviewing its diplomatic and trade ties with Israel over its conduct in Gaza. An internal report recently found indications that Israel has violated its human rights obligations under the EU-Israel Association Agreement, a 25-year-old legal framework governing the political relationship and trade cooperation between the two sides. But so far the EU has taken no action to suspend such ties. Some have criticized the EU — Israel's biggest trading partner — for a lack of political courage and for underestimating its leverage on Israel. 'What we can see is mounting pressure, but those are words, those are not actions,' said Yossi Mekelberg, a senior consulting fellow at London's Chatham House think tank. Individual countries, such as Britain, Canada and Australia, have slapped sanctions on Israeli settlers in connection with violence against Palestinians, including asset freezes and travel bans. But such measures have yielded few results. In addition, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway have sanctioned two far-right Israeli ministers for allegedly 'inciting extremist violence' against Palestinians in the West Bank. The U.K. said in May that it would suspend free trade talks with Israel, also over the West Bank. British Foreign Secretary David Lammy hinted at stronger action Tuesday, saying he felt 'sickened' by the suffering in Gaza, but he did not specify what measures were being considered. 'We will continue to pressure. We will continue to act,' Lammy told British media, stressing the need to work with allies to get the 'maximum result.' Speaking Tuesday on X, European Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen reiterated the EU's call for 'the free, safe and swift flow of humanitarian aid. And for the full respect of international and humanitarian law. Civilians in Gaza have suffered too much, for too long.' If Israel does not change course, options could include fully or partially suspending the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which would require a unanimous agreement by all 27 members of the EU. Other steps could be suspending an aviation agreement, blocking imports from settlements, limiting scientific and technological cooperation, and curtailing travel for Israelis in the visa-free zone known as Schengen, according to a leaked document sent by the EU's top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, to member states. The document was seen by The Associated Press and verified by two EU diplomats. Nations could act on their own, including sanctioning specific companies or individuals in Israel or the occupied West Bank. Why hasn't Europe taken stronger action? The short answer is that Europe remains divided, and it is highly unlikely that the entire EU would reach unanimity to drastically dial up pressure on Israel. European nations such as Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain have publicly urged the EU to reassess its ties with Israel, charging that Israel has violated human rights conditions in its agreement with Brussels. But Germany and Hungary have staunchly defended Israel, along with Romania, which just bought air-defense systems from Israel. Suspending EU ties with Israel would require a unanimous decision, which is likely impossible to obtain. Germany is the main holdout Monday's joint statement by 25 countries was rejected by the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who called it 'disgusting.' Western allies should instead pressure the 'savages of Hamas," he said. Israel condemned the countries' stance and said Hamas was the sole party responsible for prolonging the war. Hamas triggered the ongoing 21-month war with its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, and continues to hold some 50 Israeli hostages. One significant outlier in Europe is Germany, traditionally a staunch ally of Israel in Europe, with relations rooted in the memory of the Holocaust. The country has vehemently rejected the idea of suspending the EU's association agreement with Israel. Chancellor Friedrich Merz and other officials have gradually sharpened their criticism of Israel's actions in Gaza in recent months. But they still appear to favor trying to influence Israel by conveying their concerns directly. Germany did not join allies in signing Monday's letter condemning Israeli restrictions on aid. There were signs of pushback within the German government Tuesday, when the parliamentary leader of Merz's junior coalition partner, the Social Democrats, said Germany should join Britain's initiative and that 'double standards undermine our international credibility.' Merz said Monday that he had spoken at length with Netanyahu last week and 'told him very clearly that we do not share the Israeli government's Gaza policy.' 'The way the Israeli army is acting there is unacceptable,' he said. Nomi Bar-Yaacov, an expert on diplomacy in the Middle East, said any EU action must go beyond words. 'Israel doesn't listen to language," Bar-Yaacov said. "I mean, language doesn't go anywhere with the current Israeli government. Unless a mechanism is agreed and enforced promptly, then the words have no meaning whatsoever.' ___ McNeil reported from Brussels. Associated Press Writer Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.
