The death toll among children due to malnutrition and dehydration as a result of the severe lack of water and food in the northern Gaza Strip has risen to six, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
The number of children who have died from malnutrition and dehydration at hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip has risen to six, the Gaza Health Ministry announced on Thursday.
Two children at the Al-Shifa Medical Complex were the latest deaths to be announced by the ministry.
The announcement came hours after Husam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, announced the deaths of four children at the hospital in recent days for the same reasons.
“The death toll from the famine among children rose to six martyrs as a result of dehydration and malnutrition,” said Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qudra.
Al-Qudra called on international institutions to immediately intervene “to prevent the humanitarian disaster in the northern Gaza Strip.”
“The international community faces a moral and humanitarian test to stop the genocide committed by the Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip,” he added.
GAZA HEALTH SPOKESMAN: The Israeli occupation is waging a new war against the residents of Gaza, which is a war of starvation.
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— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) February 29, 2024
‘International Failure’
Earlier on Wednesday, the Palestinian resistance group Hamas said the children’s deaths constitute an “international failure to protect humanity from the crimes of the zionist entity.”
The movement demanded “all concerned parties, including UN agencies, to urgently act to deliver emergency supplies” to northern Gaza.
On February 19, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned that the sharp rise in malnutrition among children, pregnant women and lactating mothers in the Gaza Strip poses a “serious threat” to their health, especially with the ongoing war.
“Nutrition screenings conducted at shelters and health centers in the north found that 15.6 percent – or 1 in 6 children under 2 years of age – are acutely malnourished,” UNICEF said in a statement.
Of these, almost 3 percent suffer from “severe wasting, the most life-threatening form of malnutrition,” which puts young children at the highest risk of medical complications and death unless they receive urgent treatment.
“As the data were collected in January, the situation is likely to be even graver today,” UNICEF said.
Israel has put 31 hospitals in Gaza out of service through bombing, destruction and deprivation of medical supplies and fuel, and has partially targeted 152 health facilities, the Anadolu news agency reports citing the Government Media Office in Gaza.
Rising Malnutrition Threatens Children’s Lives in Gaza – UNICEF
More than 30,000 Killed
Currently on trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 30,035 Palestinians have been killed, and 70,457 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
Moreover, at least 7,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire.’
(PC, Anadolu)
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