Satellite photos show thousands scrambling after food trucks in Gaza
Satellite images verified by the Sanad agency show thousands of displaced Palestinians surrounding about 15 aid trucks that managed to enter southern Gaza.
Large numbers of desperate people extended for more than 2km (1.2 miles) along the same street.
The satellite imagery taken on July 26 shows the Israeli army established a military post along the Morag Corridor road, less than 300 metres (980 feet) from the massive crowd, with Israeli military vehicles stationed between buildings used as cover by soldiers.
Medical sources and journalists later confirmed nine civilians were killed near an aid distribution point in the Qizan al-Najjar area, south of Khan Younis, as a result of Israeli army gunfire.
‘Unconscionable’: Gaza children collapse from hunger as malnutrition surges
Save the Children says the number of children aged under five with acute malnutrition in its Gaza clinics has surged over the past four months.
In a statement, the charity said that of the 3,533 children screened for malnutrition during the first half of July, “259 were admitted for treatment (seven percent) compared to 28 (one percent) in March”.
“The number of children admitted for treatment of malnutrition in the first two weeks of July is close to the total for the whole of June,” it added.
“More than four in 10 pregnant and breastfeeding women – 43 percent – screened at Save the Children’s clinics so far in July were found to be malnourished, almost three times as many as in March when the government of Israel imposed a total siege on Gaza,” it added.
Ahmad Alhendawi, Save the Children’s regional director for the Middle East, Eastern Europe and North Africa, said it was “unconscionable” that children were collapsing from hunger and “wishing to die” at a time when “tonnes of lifesaving food and nutritional supplies that could reverse an entirely manmade crisis wait just across the border or even within Gaza”.
Rising hunger deaths proof Gaza situation crossed ‘from warning into tragedy’
The CEO of the international aid agency Mercy Corps says the latest IPC assessment of the situation in Gaza “confirms” urgent warnings of an unfolding famine in the territory.
Tjada D’Oyen McKenna said the increasing deaths from hunger, malnutrition and disease have proven that “we’ve already crossed from warning into tragedy”.
“Children are dying of hunger, malnutrition is skyrocketing, and families have exhausted every possible means to survive,” McKenna said, adding that one of the organisation’s team members in Gaza said the suffering there was “deeper than anything” they could express.
“Airdrops and humanitarian pauses are insufficient, and they won’t prevent mass starvation or help bring malnourished children back from the brink of death. None of these are adequate substitutes for a functioning humanitarian system,” McKenna said, stressing the most effective way to save lives in Gaza was to reopen all border crossings and deliver aid “at the scale that’s needed”.
