UN experts: Gaza children dying in Israel’s ‘starvation campaign’
UN rights experts on Tuesday accused Israel of carrying out a “targeted starvation campaign” that has resulted in the deaths of children in Gaza.
“We declare that Israel’s intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza,” 10 independent United Nations experts said in a statement, AFP reported.
The UN has not officially declared a famine in the Gaza Strip.
But the experts, including the UN special rapporteur on the right to food Michael Fakhri, insisted there was no denying famine was under way.
“Thirty-four Palestinians have died from malnutrition since 7 October, the majority being children,” said the experts, who are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, but who do not speak on behalf of the United Nations.
Malnutrition
The UN experts meanwhile listed three children who had recently died “from malnutrition”, after a number of others were said to have starved to death in northern Gaza earlier this year.
“Fayez Ataya, who was barely six months old, died on 30 May 2024, and 13-year-old Abdulqader Al-Serhi died on June 1, 2024 at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah,” they said.
Nine-year-old Ahmad Abu Reida died just two days later “in the tent sheltering his displaced family in Al-Mawasi, Khan Younis”, they said.
“With the death of these children from starvation despite medical treatment in central Gaza, there is no doubt that famine has spread from northern Gaza into central and southern Gaza,” they said.
The experts decried that the world had not done more to avert this disaster.
“When a two-month-old baby and 10-year-old Yazan Al Kafarneh died of hunger on 24 February and 4 March respectively, this confirmed that famine had struck northern Gaza,” they said.
“The whole world should have intervened earlier to stop Israel’s genocidal starvation campaign and prevented these deaths.”
“Inaction is complicity.”
The UN has been warning for months of a looming famine in Gaza, especially in the north, but one has not been officially declared.
Israel’s war ‘of forced
hunger’
The Hamas resistance group released a statement saying that humanitarian aid has not been allowed into the besieged coastal territory for 64 days, calling it part of Israel’s war “of forced hunger”.
Hamas also said that Israeli settlers have been systematically burning and destroying aid at the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) border crossing to prevent it from reaching Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
“The humanitarian and hunger crises, which are intensifying in Gaza and the north, are a result of a criminal Israeli policy backed by the US administration, to destroy all means of life in the Strip,” Hamas said.
Meanwhile, heavy Israeli bombardment shook Gaza City on Tuesday as thousands of fleeing Palestinians searched for shelter and medical facilities were forced to shut down in the latest offensive in the territory’s north.
Much of Gaza City and urban areas around it have been flattened or left a shattered landscape after nine months of fighting. Much of the population fled earlier in the war, but several hundred thousand Palestinians remain in the north.