Israeli forces using drone missiles packed with nails to kill people in Gaza
Doctors say they are doing everything possible to save the lives of many of the children who were transferred to hospital today after they sustained severe burns and injuries from flying shrapnel.
These drone missiles are packed with nails, and when they explode, pieces of metal fly at a very high speed, piercing bodies, causing internal injuries that lead to severe bleeding, which causes the majority of deaths among those attacked by drone missiles.
For the past 40 days or so, drone attacks have been on the rise – they target people in large crowds, whether they are in market streets or queueing for water or a community kitchen to pick up food.
These attacks are happening despite all the claims by the Israeli military that prides itself on using sophisticated, advanced weapons.
But when we look at what’s happening on the ground, and we see the number of casualties and the kind of targets being hit, it contradicts what the Israeli military is marketing.
‘Unprecedented numbers’ of starving Palestinians turning up at hospitals: Health Ministry
Starving Palestinians are arriving in emergency departments across Gaza in “unprecedented numbers”, the territory’s Health Ministry says.
In a statement, the ministry said emaciated people of all ages were turning up at hospitals in the Strip in states of “extreme exhaustion and fatigue”. It warned that hundreds of them were at risk of dying of starvation.
Mohammad Abu Salmiya, director of al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, told our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic that the hospital did not have enough beds or medical supplies to treat the huge number of people suffering from severe malnutrition.
He said 17,000 children in Gaza were suffering from severe malnutrition.
A malnourished Palestinian boy lies in a bed receiving treatment at the ICU of Nasser Hospital, in Khan Younis
The warning comes just days after UNRWA said one in 10 children screened in Gaza clinics run by the agency is malnourished.
Israel’s punishing prevention of aid entering Gaza has led to “severe shortages of nutrition supplies”, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said on Tuesday, describing the situation for starving children as “engineered and man-made”.
UNRWA’s communication director, Juliette Touma, told reporters that “medicine, nutrition supplies, hygiene material, fuel are all rapidly running out”.
“Our health teams are confirming that malnutrition rates are increasing in Gaza, especially since the siege was tightened more than four months ago on the second of March,” Touma said.
“One nurse that we spoke to told us that in the past, he only saw these cases of malnutrition in textbooks and documentaries,” she said.
Child dies of malnutrition in Deir el-Balah, Gaza
A one-year-old girl has died of malnutrition in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, a medical source at the city’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital has confirmed to Al Jazeera.
A total of 69 children have died from malnutrition in the territory since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023, Gaza’s Government Media Office says.
News of the latest death comes as Gaza’s Health Ministry warns that “unprecedented numbers” of starving Palestinians are presenting with severe malnutrition in states of “extreme exhaustion and fatigue” at the territory’s hospitals.
