UN chief alarmed 1 in 5 people in Gaza face starvation
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has denounced the fact that Gaza’s entire population is facing the risk of famine and expressed alarm that the vast majority of children experience “extreme food deprivation”.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the dire report on hunger in Gaza released earlier by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification System shows that Israel’s 70-day ban on the entry of food and other supplies is “a human made catastrophe that the world should now allow”, Guterres’s spokesman said.
The UN and the secretary-general have repeatedly called on Israel to immediately open border crossings and allow 116,000 metric tonnes of food assistance waiting on the other side to be delivered, Dujarric said.
This could feed 1 million people for four months, he added.
UN says Israeli forces continue to cross Lebanon border
The United Nations peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon reports armed incursions continue by Israeli forces north of the Blue Line that violate a UN Security Council resolution that ended the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that in the latest incident, a peacekeeping patrol reported that 10 Israeli soldiers crossed north of the Blue Line on Monday near Alma ash-Shaab.
Hezbollah’s chief Naim Qassem said Lebanon and Hezbollah have fulfilled their commitments under the November ceasefire, and the army has deployed in south Lebanon, “while Israel has not withdrawn, has not stopped its attacks”.
Israel “thinks that continuing its pressure and aggression could lead to the political end of the resistance”, he said, adding: “This will not happen.”
Israeli attacks kill 39 people on Monday
Medical sources told Al Jazeera that Israeli attacks killed 39 people across the Gaza Strip on Monday.
The dead include 17 people killed in an attack on displaced Palestinians sleeping in the Fatima Bint Asad School, in Jabalia, in the early hours of Monday morning. It also includes three people killed in an attack on a tent camp for displaced people in the al-Mawasi area.
‘Peace is the only medicine’: WHO
The World Health Organization says that “the people in Gaza are dying while WHO and partners’ medical supplies and food are minutes away, ready for deployment”.
The “WHO calls for the release of all hostages and a ceasefire. Peace is the only medicine”, it added in a post on X.
Trucks queue in El Arish in Egypt during Israel’s blockade of Gaza
