UNICEF spokesperson James Elder warns situation in Gaza worsening as water crisis looms
The screams of injured children who can no longer access painkillers fill the air in Gaza, where UNICEF spokesperson James Elder says "daily atrocities" are not only being committed but have escalated in the past fortnight.
Mr Elder told 7.30 Gaza is facing multiple crises, even as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says his nation will continue its war in there until the nation's objectives are completed.
Mr Elder says water is now scarce, may run out in just a fortnight and could result in children dying of thirst.
Children here though are already dying, with a May UNICEF report stating 50,000 children had been injured or killed since Israel's response to Hamas's October 7, 2023 terror attack.
The UNICEF spokesperson recounted the story of one child who had died after sustaining injuries near an aid site.
"I went to a hospital and I met a little 13-year-old boy, he'd been given money just to go and buy bread for his family," Mr Elder recounted.
"He saw a flood of people going to one of these [aid] sites and thought 'my goodness, my family, I can, I can end my mum's starvation pain'.
"A tank shell exploded and ripped through his stomach.
"When I met this little boy, he was telling his story and his dad's in tears.
"Finally, after my two weeks in Gaza on my final day, this little guy, Abad Al Rahman, died of those injuries, died trying to get food for his family.
"This is not a one off. This is happening consistently and will continue to because it's a combat site."
The latest such incident allegedly occurred earlier on Wednesday when 19 people were reported to have been killed while trying to access aid in the central Gaza city of Nuseirat.
Mr Elder says these incidents are emblematic of a rapidly worsening situation in Gaza, where aid stations are placed in combat sites, causing those living there to face even more danger as they attempt to procure essentials.
"There is a handful of sites and they're militarised," he said.
"The United Nations has made very clear there is reason why you cannot have one party to a conflict handing out aid to those it chooses in a combat site — because it's a combat site.
"We have now seen reports of 400-500 hundred people killed around these distribution points. People go there because they are being starved [and] they're forced to go to these sites.
"They were described to me like The Hunger Games [people] corralled into like cattle pens and then there's firing, there's tank shells.
"And then when there is a a mass killing, it is explained away by the IDF as, 'It was a combat site.'
Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel last week denied that there was any starvation occurring in Gaza during an appearance on 7.30.
"Every report that came out was mentioning that this is a possibility for a future scenario — like an imminent threat, or anything like that," Ms Haskel said.
"It means that it could happen in the future but we're monitoring it up closely."
Mr Elder says things are much worse than that and that the water situation is dire.
"Two things strike me beyond beyond the grave situation of civilians there," Mr Elder said.
"One is water, there's been a complete denial of any fuel to come in for the desalinating plants for 100 days.
"We are weeks away from children dying of thirst.
"And the other ... I think of all the things being deprived from going into Gaza ... it's painkillers.
"I never get used to seeing those little girls and boys with the burns or the shrapnel [wounds] but this time around I heard them.
"This is utterly avoidable. This is not logistical, this is political. We could change this within 24 hours by allowing medicines and fuel and so on.
"Children's bodies are not waiting for some technical declaration in Gaza."
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Perth Now
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Israel's Netanyahu slams Gaza aid shooting report
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10 hours ago
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Israeli soldiers ordered to fire on Palestinians queuing for aid, say whistleblowers
Over the period in question, the Hamas-run health ministry says 549 people have been killed and 4000 have been wounded trying to pick up aid. 'A killing field' One soldier told Haaretz: 'It's a killing field. Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. 'They're treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the centre opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire.' The soldier added: 'We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred metres away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there's no danger to the forces.' Loading 'I'm not aware of a single instance of return fire. There's no enemy, no weapons,' they said. The aid distribution points at which the majority of the killings occurred are run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a controversial joint venture set up by Israel and the US to bypass the UN, which Israel has accused of working with Hamas. It now operates four 'rapid distribution' sites in Gaza – three in southern Gaza and one in the centre. They are staffed by private US and Palestinian workers but secured by the IDF from a distance of several hundred metres and only open for an hour at a time – a tactic that attracts crowds of thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of people. An IDF officer told Haaretz that the military's security perimeters around distribution points included tanks, snipers and mortars, and they were designed to protect those present and ensure aid distribution could take place. 'At night, we open fire to signal to the population that this is a combat zone, and they mustn't come near,' the officer said. 'Once, the mortars stopped firing, and we saw people starting to approach. So we resumed fire to make it clear they weren't allowed to. In the end, one of the shells landed on a group of people.' In other cases, he said, 'We fired machine guns from tanks and threw grenades. There was one incident where a group of civilians was hit while advancing under the cover of fog. It wasn't intentional, but these things happen.' 'There's no danger' According to the officers and soldiers who spoke to Haaretz, the IDF fires at people who arrive before opening hours to prevent them from approaching, or again after the centres close, to disperse them. One soldier said: 'We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred metres away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there's no danger to the forces.' A senior officer whose name 'repeatedly comes up in testimonies about the shootings near aid sites' is Brigadier General Yehuda Vach, commander of the IDF's Division 252, reported Haaretz. He has previously attracted criticism in the Israeli media and was reported to have once told his troops: 'There are no innocents in Gaza'. Brigadier General Vach is also suspected of ordering the destruction of a hospital in Gaza without authorisation earlier this year, according to Israeli media. 'These are malicious falsehoods designed to defame the IDF, the most moral military in the world. IDF soldiers receive clear orders to avoid harming civilians' Statement from Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz However, Haaretz added: 'Vach's division is not the only one operating in the area, and it's possible that other officers also gave orders to fire at people seeking aid.' Nir Hasson, an investigative journalist who researched and wrote the story, with colleagues Yaniv Kubovich and Bar Peleg, said that while the 'big majority' of Israelis still supported the war in Gaza, 'cracks in the mainstream consensus' were starting to appear. He said the soldiers and officers the newspaper had interviewed were motivated to speak partly for 'humanitarian' reasons but also because they feared that 'professionalism' and 'ethics' in parts of the IDF were breaking down. 'They say it goes against the values of the IDF and the state of Israel, and they will add that it is unbelievable that we are killing starving people who only want to get to the food,' Hasson said. 'Falsehoods' Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel Katz, the Israeli defence minister, said the Haaretz report was 'blood libel' designed to discredit the Israeli military. 'The State of Israel absolutely rejects the contemptible blood libels that have been published in the Haaretz newspaper,' they said in a joint statement. Loading They added: 'These are malicious falsehoods designed to defame the IDF, the most moral military in the world. IDF soldiers receive clear orders to avoid harming innocent civilians, and they act accordingly.' In a statement, the IDF denied that its soldiers had been ordered to shoot at Palestinians but said it was investigating. A spokesman said: 'The IDF did not instruct the forces to deliberately shoot at civilians, including those approaching the distribution centres. To be clear, IDF directives prohibit deliberate attacks on civilians.' They added that 'systematic learning processes aimed at improving the operational response in the area and minimising, as much as possible, potential friction between the civilian population and IDF forces' were taking place.
