Charity says ‘no respite for children’ after US vetoes ceasefire resolution
The charity Save the Children warns of the price Gaza’s children will pay for the UN Security Council’s most recent failure to adopt a ceasefire resolution due to a US veto. The group says in a statement that Israel’s war in Gaza has killed at least 12,400 children, making it one of the deadliest military campaigns in modern history in regard to its impact on children.
Save the Children said that at least one million children in Gaza remain at risk from fighting, starvation, disease and the mental distress of the war. A recent UNICEF analysis found that 90 percent of children in Gaza under the age of five are suffering from at least one infectious disease.
“We are appalled to hear of this new low in an already deep pit of failures from the international community. After four months of relentless violence, we are running out of words to describe what children and families in Gaza are going through, as well as the tools to respond in any adequate way,” said the group’s director for the occupied Palestinian territories, Jason Lee.
Stopping WFP aid to northern Gaza a ‘death sentence’: Gaza authorities
Gaza’s Government Media Office has decried the UN World Food Programme’s decision to suspend deliveries to northern Gaza, where the security situation is deteriorating. The office said the move “would mean a death sentence for three-quarters of a million people” and will “exponentially worsen the humanitarian situation”.
“We urge all UN agencies to return to the governorates of Gaza and North Gaza immediately and without hesitation instead of complacency and escaping responsibility,” the local authorities said.
They added that the UN would be responsible for the “catastrophic consequences” of famine in the territory. The WFP had cited security risks and the “breakdown of social order” as the reasons behind its decision. Israel is imposing a severe siege on Gaza against international pleas – including from its allies in Europe and the United States – to allow more aid into the territory.
Palestinians carry bags of flour they grabbed from an aid truck near an Israeli checkpoint in Gaza City, February 19, 2024
Gaza’s Government Media Office has warned that more than 700,000 Palestinians in the north of the territory could perish from hunger as Israel restricts humanitarian aid to the area. The office called on Russia, China and Turkey as well as Arab and Muslim nations and “all countries of the free world” to intervene and apply pressure for an end to the “genocide and famine” in Gaza.
“We call for an urgent and immediate end to the genocidal war against civilians, women and children as we call for bringing 10,000 aid trucks over the next two days into Gaza,” the office said in a statement. “We hold the US administration and the international community additionally to Israel fully responsible for this famine.”
The World Food Programme earlier announced a pause in its aid deliveries to northern Gaza, citing a danger to its crews from the “breakdown of social order” caused by mass starvation. Hunger is rampant in northern Gaza as Israel continues to block aid distribution missions there. A recent UN report, whose findings were collected at health centres, found that roughly 15 percent of children there under the age of 2 suffer from malnutrition.
Journalists targeted by Israeli forces in Gaza City
Footage posted to X by the Shehab News Agency, based in Palestine, shows journalists, clearly marked in “Press” ballistics vests, running through the city’s destroyed streets as explosions and small arms fire can be heard in the background. The journalists, Shehab says, were covering the situation in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City.
Earlier, Israeli army radio reported that a military operation had begun in that same neighbourhood.
#شاهد| جيش الاحتلال يطلق النيران على الصحفيين حسن حمد وحسام شبات وملك أبو حسين بشكل مباشر أثناء تغطيتهم في حي الزيتون بغزة pic.twitter.com/KVsZ7TCz4l
— وكالة شهاب للأنباء (@ShehabAgency) February 20, 2024
