Gaza must be flooded with food aid ‘each and every day to prevent mass starvation’: WFP
The UN’s World Food Programme says the organisation and partners are doing everything possible to deliver urgent assistance to people in Gaza, “but it’s just a drop in the ocean of needs”.
“We need to flood Gaza with food aid, and keep it flowing each and every day to prevent mass starvation,” its statement said on X.
“Families in Gaza are going days without food. Parents are making impossible choices – sacrificing their own meals, and even their safety, to feed their children,” the WFP post added.
Families in #Gaza are going days without food.
Parents are making impossible choices - sacrificing their own meals, and even their safety, to feed their children.
WFP and partners are doing everything possible to deliver urgent assistance. But it's just a drop in the ocean of… pic.twitter.com/NtzP4LQ0aQ
— World Food Programme (@WFP) August 6, 2025
UN says Israeli restrictions on Gaza access impeding lifesaving work
Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, says Israel’s refusal to allow United Nations and other humanitarian staff into Gaza is hampering efforts to help starving Palestinians.
As we reported earlier, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today that the number of medical teams getting denied have risen by “nearly 50 percent” since March 18, with 102 EMT health professionals, including surgeons and specialised doctors, barred from entering Gaza.
“It hinders our effort to have our people on the ground coordinating the efforts to bring food in. The fewer UN people, the fewer NGO people, there are that can do this work, it slows our facilities down,” Haq said during a briefing at UN headquarters in New York City.
“This is an added obstacle at a time when we need the removal of obstacles because we need to get as much aid in, as quickly as possible, to prevent people from dying,” Haq told reporters.
He added that the fact that Israel still only allows the UN to use two crossing points into Gaza – Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) and Zikim – to bring in humanitarian aid is also a major impediment.
Starving Palestinian children ‘don’t cry because they can’t cry’
We’ve spoken to Trish Scanlan, medical co-director of the group Children Not Numbers, which works to help Palestinian children in Gaza who need medical care.
She explained the excruciating suffering that starving children are experiencing across the enclave.
Starvation “is a horrible way to die”, Scanlan told Al Jazeera.
“They start by being starving. Then they get tired, then they get foggy, then they get freezing cold, and then hunger goes away, but then they start reabsorbing their organs, including their bones, which is extraordinarily painful,” she said.
“But these children don’t cry because they can’t cry.
“This goes on for weeks and weeks, and then after about two months, the children die. And this is happening to thousands and thousands of children across Gaza in a completely man-made way.”
Maryam Duvvas, 9, receives treatment for malnutrition in Gaza City, August 3
