A child died from “malnutrition, thirst and lack of medicine” at Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al Balah, central Gaza, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa and, with it, 40 victims of hunger have risen since the war began. Famine is also affecting the northern Strip according to hospital director Kamal Adwan, who said in a statement: “Northern Gaza is facing a humanitarian disaster with the specter of famine looming.”
“We don’t have food in Jabalia, we have some types of cans (of food),” said the acting director of Al Awda hospital in that city, about his situation in the center. Throughout the Strip, 82 thousand children presented symptoms of malnutritionand 35 percent were in serious condition, according to the Gazan government.
“More than 96 percent of women and children between 6 and 23 months do not meet their nutritional needs in the absence of minimal dietary diversity,” reported the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA, in English), in its latest report on the situation in Gaza. Of the 40 dead in the enclave due to hunger, 33 are children according to Gazan authorities.
On June 7, the United Nations included Israel on the “black list” of countries that violate children’s rights. In the conflict between Israel and Hamas, 15,694 of the 37,266 deaths would be minors, according to the Strip’s Ministry of Health. The Commissioner General of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, also denounced the situation of children in the enclave with a text on social networks: “Too many have died, too many were injured and too many will be scarred for life.” .
Rafah offensive continues
In Rafah, at the southern end of the Strip, the Army will advance “until all its objectives are achieved,” said Yaron Finkelman, commander of the Southern Command of the Israeli Army, who did not specify how far, despite the fact that thousands of Palestinians remain displaced in the Al Mawasi beaches that Israel designated as a “safe zone.”
Those objectives, according to the usual rhetoric of the Army and the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, are the return of all hostages and the elimination of Hamas’ military and government capabilities. Israel said it was carrying out “precise and intelligence-based” operations in Rafah, and in one of them soldiers found passages in the walls between homes used by Hamas militants “to pass through residences in densely populated neighborhoods.”
Medical sources told Al Jazeera news network that At least 25 Palestinians died in Gaza on Friday. In an Israeli attack on the Al Tuffah district, a baby died and another 30 people were injured. Witnesses in Rafah reported helicopter fire in the west and center of the city, while Hamas’s armed wing said its fighters fired mortar shells at Israeli troops near the Tal Al Sultan neighborhood.
