‘Women, children look like they haven’t eaten in weeks’
Claire Manera, emergency coordinator of medical aid group Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, says conditions in Gaza are “like nothing [she’s] ever seen”, with people flooding into clinics malnourished and displaced.
Israel’s nearly three-month aid blockade, which the government has said it is just starting to ease, has caused enormous harm to women and children in particular, says Manera.
“I see women and children who look like they haven’t eaten for weeks,” she told Al Jazeera from central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah. “We know that they’re suffering because they can’t find a safe place to sleep at night and the hospital facilities that are open are becoming fewer and fewer because they’re being targeted.”
Manera said her team has yet to see any aid on the ground from a first batch of nine trucks cleared for entry yesterday. “And nine trucks is nothing compared to the need here,” she added. “We need access to our own aid and we need to be able to use this impartially for the population.”
Starving Palestinians resort to eating animal feed, flour mixed with sand
The urgent calls to get humanitarian aid into Gaza are being made against a backdrop of acute suffering among Palestinians.
According to the UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), more than 93 percent of children in Gaza – about 930,000 – are at risk of famine due to the ongoing war and blockade.
Since early March, at least 57 children are reported to have died from malnutrition.
If Israel’s blockade of the Strip continues, it says, nearly 71,000 children under the age of five are expected to suffer acute malnutrition during the next 11 months.
Families in Gaza are resorting to eating animal feed, expired flour and flour mixed with sand, while children suffer from hunger-induced illnesses such as diarrhoea and extreme fatigue.
UNRWA chief says he fears Gaza could reach a point where it becomes unlivable
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency, warns that Israel’s expanding operations could eventually create conditions where Palestinians are not able to live in Gaza.
“What I see for the time being is a continuation of the destruction, of the deaths and killing of the Palestinians in Gaza. And my fear is that we might reach a point where Gaza might not be a land any more for Palestinians to live in,” he said in a media interview.
Top Israeli officials have said as much in public comments as to their plans and goals for the enclave.
‘No sign yet’ of aid entering Gaza today
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reports that there are still no signs of aid trucks entering Gaza today, after the United Nations said Israel had cleared 100 trucks to go in.
Even this number of trucks would be “a drop in the ocean of needs,” said Abu Azzoum from central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah.
It's already 6PM in Gaza...
