Gaza facing ‘famine-driven mass casualty scenario’
In Al-Aqsa Hospital, the emergency rooms are crowded with children and patients showing severe signs of malnutrition: sunken eyes, emaciated bodies and severe fatigue.
The medical teams are operating with very, very limited resources. They say that what is going on is not just a hunger crisis, it’s a full collapse of the human body under siege.
They say that if food does not reach the population soon, the situation will turn into a famine-driven mass casualty scenario.
People are saying that they have gone for days without getting anything to eat. Food is starting to run out from local markets and the only source of aid right now is the aid provided by the notorious Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
Children are crying every single minute, calling for food, for bread, for flour. These products are no longer available in Gaza’s markets.
‘There is nothing’, says Gaza NGO boss amid acute aid shortages
The director of an umbrella group of Palestinian NGOs says that the reports of starving people arriving at hospitals in Gaza for treatment is further evidence of the abject failure of the controversial GHF to fulfil humanitarian needs.
Speaking from Al Jazeera from Gaza City, Amjad Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGOs Network, said that Gaza was facing dire shortages of aid. “Today there is nothing,” he said. “Everything is run out.”
He said it was clear that the GHF, tasked with distributing aid in the territory, was serving Israel’s “political-military agenda” rather than a humanitarian one.
The GHF’s model meant it was forcing desperate Palestinians to its distribution hub in the south, making a perilous journey in hope of being one of the few to receive a food parcel. There have been frequent killings of aid seekers around the GHF distribution point.
Shawa said that, rather than feeding Gaza’s population, the GHF had been a “mechanism for killing”. “It’s become very risky for people to go [there],” he said.
Desperate crowds jostle for food amid critical shortages in Gaza
Footage circulating on social media shows dramatic scenes as crowds of hungry Palestinians shove and scramble at a food station in Gaza.
The video clip, posted on Instagram and verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad fact-checking agency, showed a dangerous crush as large crowds of people, each carrying cooking pots, jostled to access food at a food station.
The chaotic scenes played out as officials in Gaza warned of critical food shortages amid an Israeli blockade on Gaza, with the Health Ministry saying unprecedented numbers of starving people were presenting at hospitals for help.
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