Israeli forces kill 63 Palestinian in Gaza within hours of ‘humanitarian pause'
However, within hours of the so-called 'humanitarian pause' taking effect, Israeli forces resumed air raids.
One reported strike targeted a bakery in an area designated as a 'safe zone', according to Al Jazeera.
The humanitarian crisis continued to worsen. Health officials reported six more deaths, including of two children, from starvation in the past 24 hours, taking the total to 133.
Among the latest to succumb was five-month-old Zainab Abu Haleeb, who died of malnutrition at the Nasser Hospital.
'Three months inside the hospital and this is what I get in return, that she is dead,' her mother Israa Abu Haleeb told Al Jazeera.
The World Food Programme said one in three people in Gaza had gone days without food and about half a million were experiencing famine-like conditions.
More than 20 per cent of pregnant and breastfeeding women were malnourished, according to the World Health Organization.
Israel maintains that it is working to improve aid access and denies that famine exists in Gaza.
But aid organisations say the situation is catastrophic, with a quarter of the population at risk of acute malnutrition. UN officials say the crisis won't ease unless Israel speeds up the movement of aid convoys through its checkpoints.
A top UN official said last week Palestinians were beginning to resemble 'walking corpses'.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, said humanitarian workers were encountering children who were 'emaciated, weak and at high risk of dying' without immediate intervention.
'Families are no longer coping. They're breaking down, unable to survive,' Mr Lazzarini said. 'Their existence is threatened.'
Israel has severely limited the flow of food and humanitarian aid into Gaza, allowing only a small number of trucks to enter each day after enforcing an 11-week total blockade earlier this year.
UN officials warn the current level of aid is merely a drop in the ocean compared to the scale of need.
The Israeli military intercepted an aid ship bound for Gaza that aimed to breach the blockade on the Palestinian territory, detaining 21 international activists and journalists and confiscating all cargo, including baby formula, food, and medicine, according to the Freedom Flotilla Coalition on Sunday.
The group said Israeli forces 'violently intercepted' their vessel, Handala, in international waters around 40 nautical miles off the coast of Gaza, cutting off cameras and communication shortly before midnight on Saturday.
'All cargo was non-military, civilian and intended for direct distribution to a population facing deliberate starvation and medical collapse under Israel's illegal blockade,'' the group said in a statement.
It was the second ship operated by the coalition that Israeli forces prevented in recent months from delivering aid to Gaza.
It was reported on Sunday that Jordan and the UAE had begun airdropping aid into the besieged Palestinian territory. But Mr Lazzarini said 'airdrops will not reverse the deepening starvation'.
'They are expensive, inefficient and can even kill starving civilians. It is a distraction & smokescreen,' he said in an X post.
'A manmade hunger can only be addressed by political will. Lift the siege, open the gates and guarantee safe movements with dignified access to people in need.
Israel's war on Gaza has killed nearly 60,000 Palestinians, injured over 144,000, and left most of the densely populated coastal territory in ruins and the majority of its 2.2 million people homeless and starving.
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Irish Independent
3 hours ago
- Irish Independent
Famine in Gaza ‘is not a warning – this is a reality unfolding before our eyes', UN says
A new alert, still short of a formal famine declaration, follows an outcry over images of emaciated children in Gaza and reports of dozens of hunger-related deaths after nearly 22 months of war. The international pressure led Israel over the weekend to announce measures, including daily humanitarian pauses in fighting in parts of Gaza and air drops. The United Nations and Palestinians on the ground say little has changed though, and desperate crowds continue to overwhelm and unload delivery trucks before they can reach their destinations. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, said Gaza has teetered on the brink of famine for two years but recent developments have 'dramatically worsened' the situation, including 'increasingly stringent blockades' by Israel. A formal famine declaration, which is rare, requires the kind of data that the lack of access to Gaza and mobility within has largely denied. The IPC has only declared famine a few times – in Somalia in 2011, South Sudan in 2017 and 2020, and parts of Sudan's western Darfur region last year. But independent experts say they do not need a formal declaration to know what they are seeing in Gaza. 'Just as a family physician can often diagnose a patient she's familiar with based on visible symptoms without having to send samples to the lab and wait for results, so too we can interpret Gaza's symptoms. This is famine,' Alex de Waal, author of Mass Starvation: The History And Future Of Famine and executive director of the World Peace Foundation, told The Associated Press. An area is classified as in famine when all three of the following conditions are confirmed: - At least 20pc of households have an extreme lack of food, or are essentially starving. - At least 30pc of children aged six months to five-years-old suffer from acute malnutrition or wasting, meaning they are too thin for their height. - At least two people or four children under five per 10,000 are dying daily due to starvation or the interaction of malnutrition and disease. The report is based on available information through to July 25 and says the crisis has reached 'an alarming and deadly turning point'. It says data indicates that famine thresholds have been reached for food consumption in most of Gaza - at its lowest level since the war began - and for acute malnutrition in Gaza City. The report says nearly 17 out of every 100 children under the age of five in Gaza City are acutely malnourished. Mounting evidence shows 'widespread starvation'. Essential health and other services have collapsed. One in three people in Gaza is going without food for days at a time, according to the World Food Programme. Hospitals report a rapid increase in hunger-related deaths in children under five. Gaza's population of over two million has been squeezed into increasingly tiny areas of the devastated territory. 'This is not a warning. It is a reality unfolding before our eyes,' UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said in a statement on the new report, adding that the 'trickle of aid must become an ocean'. Failure to act now will result in widespread death in much of the strip The IPC's latest analysis in May warned that Gaza will likely fall into famine if Israel does not lift its blockade and stop its military campaign. Its new alert calls for immediate and large-scale action and warns: 'Failure to act now will result in widespread death in much of the strip.' Israel has restricted aid to varying degrees throughout the war. In March, it cut off the entry of all goods, including fuel, food and medicine, to pressure Hamas to free hostages. Israel eased those restrictions in May but also pushed ahead with a new US-backed aid delivery system that has been wracked by chaos and violence. The traditional, UN-led aid providers say deliveries have been hampered by Israeli military restrictions and incidents of looting, while criminals and hungry crowds swarm convoys. While Israel says there is no limit on how many aid trucks can enter Gaza, UN agencies and aid groups say even the latest humanitarian measures are not enough to counter the worsening starvation. In a statement Monday, Doctors Without Borders called the new air drops ineffective and dangerous, saying they deliver less aid than trucks. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said no one is starving in Gaza and that Israel has supplied enough aid throughout the war, 'otherwise, there would be no Gazans'. Israel's military criticised what it calls 'false claims of deliberate starvation in Gaza'. Israel's closest ally now appears to disagree. 'Those children look very hungry,' president Donald Trump said on Monday of the images from Gaza in recent days. Meanwhile, Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar rejected claims of 'starvation policies' in Gaza and said the focus on starvation is a 'distorted campaign of international pressure'. 'This pressure is directly sabotaging the chances for a ceasefire and hostage deal, it is only pushing towards military escalation by hardening Hamas's stance,' he said.
Irish Examiner
8 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
Irish Examiner view: Delays to colonoscopy tests could be a matter of life or death
This week, we learned that thousands of people have been waiting far too long for vital cancer testing procedures, a problem which seems to be getting worse. Some 2,764 people have waited between 29 and 60 days for an urgent colonoscopy between January and May this year. According to the guidelines issued by the HSE, those with symptoms of bowel cancer should be seen within 28 days. That means some people have been waiting for over twice as long as the recommended time period for this vital intervention. To make matters worse, that number appears to be increasing, as 3,623 people were waiting longer than the recommended timeframe in 2024. The Irish Cancer Society pointed out that in 2017, no patient in Ireland had to wait longer than 28 days for an urgent colonoscopy, yet if the current trend continues through 2025, more than 6,500 people will not be seen within the 28-day period. The society's description of this development as a shocking deterioration in service, which is putting lives at risk, cannot be contradicted. This may seem at first glance yet another health service fiasco, one in a long line of similar disasters. But bowel cancer is a particular challenge. It is the second most common cancer in men, the third most common cancer in women, and the third leading cause of cancer death in Ireland. The Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) said this months screening from the age of 50 was likely to be effective in terms of reducing deaths from colorectal cancer. However, plans for earlier screening are meaningless if that screening cannot be carried out. The long waiting times for colonoscopies which were revealed this week are a disheartening reminder that even established processes can break down, given the deterioration in waiting times between 2017 and the present. Strategies conceived with the best of intentions count for little if they cannot be put into practice. Failings of a justice system The man responsible for the killing of Irish soldier Private Seán Rooney was sentenced to death at a military tribunal in Beirut, Lebanon, this week. According to Lebanese media reports, Mohammad Ayyad was sentenced to death and fined 100m Lebanese pounds, or approximately €970. The remains of Irish UN peacekeeping soldier Seán Rooney arriving at Casement Aerodrome, Baldonnell, Co Dublin, in December 2022. Pte Rooney, from Newtowncunningham, Co Donegal, was killed on active service when his convoy came under attack in Lebanon. Another defendant was sentenced to three months, while yet another received one month: They were both fined as well. Ayyad was not in court for the sentencing however, while local media have reported that Lebanon has not carried out an execution in decades — so he is likely to receive a prison sentence instead. Pt Rooney, of Newtowncunningham, Donegal, was killed when a UN peacekeeping force was targeted in an attack on their vehicle in at Al-Aqbiya, Lebanon, in December 2022. He was 24 years old. Those responsible have received light sentences, with the exception of one individual who remains at large in the country and did not even have to attend the sentencing. Concerns have been raised repeatedly about the progress of this case, and the verdicts issued this week show the validity of those concerns. A justice system in which a killer does not even have to be present in court when sentenced to death hardly seems fit for purpose. The Rooney family, which has already had to deal with the trauma of losing a loved one, has been badly let down by that justice system. Taoiseach Micheál Martin weighed in on the matter yesterday when saying that the case had taken too long and that some of the sentences issued were unduly lenient. 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Picture: Liam McBurney/PA The process was far from straightforward, given the reticence of some senior officers to apply for the post because of pension implications. At one point, it was even suggested that those pension implications might mean only applicants outside Ireland would apply for the position. This is not to cast aspersions on such applicants, but at this fraught time in Irish life, it is surely preferable to have someone at the helm of the national police force who is already familiar with the particular challenges facing An Garda Síochána. That is certainly true of Mr Kelly, to judge by his policing background, which includes stints as assistant commissioner with responsibility for serious and organised crime, as well as detective chief superintendent in the Garda counter-terrorism unit. The rise of the far right, the ongoing threat of drugs gangs, the operation of rogue states in Ireland, the shadow cast by cybercrime — these are all challenges requiring urgent attention. Morale and standards within the force will also be scrutinised. Mr Kelly's appointment coincided with reports of a former garda being jailed for seven years for impersonating a colleague online, and inciting men to come to her home and rape her. The new commissioner's in-tray is already full. Best wishes to him. Read More Irish Examiner view: State must be ready to step in
Irish Times
16 hours ago
- Irish Times
Israeli human rights groups accuse Israel of committing genocide in Gaza
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