GAZA CITY: The death toll in Gaza has risen to 50,277 since Israel launched its bombardment campaign on 7 October 2023, according to the territory’s health ministry.
The ministry reported on Saturday that 921 people have been killed since Israel resumed large-scale airstrikes on 18 March, with 25 deaths recorded in the past 24 hours.
In a statement, the ministry said 70 people had been wounded in the latest round of strikes, bringing the total number of injuries to 114,095.
The ministry warned that many victims remained trapped under rubble or in open areas, with rescuers struggling to reach them due to ongoing hostilities.
The intensified military operations have also exacerbated a severe humanitarian crisis, with the United Nations and aid agencies warning of widespread hunger.
Tom Fletcher, chief of humanitarian affairs at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told the UN Security Council that food was rotting at Gaza’s shuttered borders due to Israeli restrictions on humanitarian aid.
“Food is rotting, medicine is expiring, and vital medical equipment is stuck,” Fletcher said.
“International humanitarian law prohibits indiscriminate attacks, obstruction of life-saving aid, destruction of infrastructure indispensable for civilians’ survival, and hostage-taking. If these principles still count, the international community must act while it can to uphold them.”
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) on Thursday warned that food supplies in Gaza are critically low, with only 5,700 tonnes remaining, enough to sustain operations for two weeks.
The agency reported that prices have skyrocketed, with a 25kg bag of wheat flour now costing up to $50—a 400% increase compared to pre-March levels.
Palestinians in Gaza have described surviving on canned goods as fresh food supplies dwindle.
The blockade on aid comes as Israel resumed strikes after the collapse of a temporary ceasefire in January.
Hamas has refused to extend the first stage of the agreement, which focused on prisoner exchanges, insisting on negotiations for an Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza and an end to the conflict.
The Israeli military on Saturday acknowledged that it had fired on ambulances in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, describing the vehicles as “suspicious.”
In a statement to AFP, the military said troops had initially targeted “Hamas vehicles” and killed several fighters. However, it later determined that some of the vehicles were ambulances and fire trucks.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said it lost contact with a team of six rescuers who had been dispatched to the Tal Al-Sultan area on 24 March.
The agency later recovered the body of the team leader and found their ambulance and firefighting vehicle destroyed.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society reported that one of its ambulances had been reduced to “a pile of scrap metal.”
Hamas spokesman Basem Naim condemned the attack as a “deliberate and brutal massacre against Civil Defence and Palestinian Red Crescent teams,” calling it a “war crime” under the Geneva Conventions.
The United Nations has reported that 142,000 Palestinians have been displaced in the past week alone, compounding an already dire humanitarian situation.
“Hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza are again at risk of severe hunger and malnutrition as humanitarian food stocks dwindle and borders remain closed to aid,” the WFP warned, adding that escalating violence was putting the lives of aid workers at risk.
