KEY POINTS
- UN and humanitarian agencies warn of worsening starvation, calling it a man-made crisis.
- UNRWA chief said airdrops are ineffective, urging Israel to lift the siege and allow safe access for aid.
- Aid deliveries remain far below needs, despite Israeli claims that 950 trucks are inside Gaza awaiting distribution.
- MSF and WHO report alarming malnutrition rates, accusing Israel of using starvation as a weapon.
- Over 100 aid groups call for full humanitarian access, warning of mass starvation if restrictions persist.
GAZA CITY, Palestine: At least 25 Palestinians were killed on Saturday as Israel intensified air and ground operations across the Gaza Strip, the territory’s civil defence agency said, amid what United Nations officials and humanitarian groups are describing as a worsening man-made starvation crisis.
Mahmud Bassal, a spokesman for the civil defence agency, told AFP that Israeli airstrikes killed nine people in Gaza City, while four separate strikes near the southern city of Khan Younis left 11 dead.
Two others were killed in a drone strike on the Nuseirat refugee camp, Bassal added.
According to the civil defence agency, three more civilians were killed by Israeli gunfire in separate incidents across northern, central, and southern Gaza while waiting for humanitarian aid.
One of the victims was shot northwest of Gaza City near the Zikim area. Thousands of people had gathered at the aid distribution point, located near an Israeli military post, when troops opened fire, witnesses told AFP.
Abu Samir Hamoudeh, 42, who was present at the scene, said Israeli forces fired while people were waiting to approach the distribution point.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military said its troops had fired “warning shots to distance the crowd” after identifying an “immediate threat”.
Bassal said another man was killed in a drone strike near Khan Younis, while another died from artillery fire in the Al-Bureij camp in central Gaza.
He also said that 12 bodies were recovered in a joint operation with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) following bombardment north of Rafah the previous night.
The Israeli military confirmed it had conducted strikes across Gaza, stating in a post that the air force had “struck over 100 terror targets” over the past 24 hours.
It also said that a “terrorist cell” accused of planting an explosive device had been killed.
Israel began its military campaign in Gaza following the 7 October 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel.
Since October 2023, more than 59,676 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed in the ongoing Israeli military operations across the Gaza Strip, the territory’s health ministry said on Saturday.
Worsening hunger crisis
The head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, warned on Saturday that humanitarian airdrops planned in Gaza would not stop the worsening hunger crisis.
Writing on X, Lazzarini said, “Airdrops will not reverse the deepening starvation. They are expensive, inefficient & can even kill starving civilians.” He called the widespread hunger in Gaza “man-made”.
Lazzarini urged Israel to “lift the siege, open the gates & guarantee safe movements + dignified access to people in need,” highlighting the limited access points and ongoing restrictions on humanitarian aid deliveries.
While aid deliveries resumed in late May after Israel imposed a total blockade on 2 March, UN agencies and aid organisations say the flow remains insufficient.
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday that almost a third of Gaza’s population is “not eating for days,” with food deliveries “far below what is needed for the survival of the population”.
The Israeli military maintains it does not limit the number of aid trucks entering Gaza, stating that 950 truckloads were currently inside the Palestinian territory awaiting distribution.
Humanitarian groups, however, accuse Israel of imposing excessive restrictions on the type of goods allowed and on access routes, complicating logistics and delaying aid from reaching civilians.
‘Hurtling towards famine’
The World Health Organization (WHO) and NGOs including Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) have warned of a looming famine.
MSF said on Friday that a quarter of all children and pregnant or breastfeeding women screened at its Gaza clinics last week were malnourished.
The group accused Israel of the “deliberate use of starvation as a weapon”.
WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described the crisis as “man-made… mass starvation”, warning that Gaza’s population is being deprived of essential resources.
He added that aid deliveries were far below what is required to prevent deaths from hunger and disease.
NGO Action Against Hunger said Israeli military orders for repeated evacuations and the destruction of agricultural land have contributed to the catastrophic food insecurity in Gaza.
The organisation’s regional director, Jean-Raphael Poitou, said restrictions on movement in the most affected areas “complicate things enormously”.
WHO emergency incident manager Nabil Tabbal said, “There are challenges regarding data, regarding access to information,” further complicating formal famine classification.
Unrestricted humanitarian access
Over 100 aid groups, including Amnesty International, Save the Children, Christian Aid, Oxfam, and MSF, have issued urgent appeals for Israel to open all border crossings and allow full humanitarian access.
They warned that failure to act now could result in mass deaths from starvation in the Palestinian territory.
France’s foreign ministry has described the situation as the result of Israel’s blockade, while Israeli officials deny accusations of deliberately engineering famine.
Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer said, “There is no famine caused by Israel. There is a man-made shortage engineered by Hamas.”
However, The New York Times on Saturday reported that, according to Israeli military officials, no evidence had been found to support claims that Hamas is seizing or hoarding aid.
