‘Famine is absolutely ravaging Gaza City’: UNICEF
Staff at a supported nutrition centre in Gaza City, where parents take children to be screened and treated for malnutrition, are facing an overwhelming demand on their services, says the UN agency for children, UNICEF.
“It’s clear on the ground that famine is absolutely ravaging Gaza City,” UNICEF spokesperson Tess Ingram told Al Jazeera during a visit to the centre, adding she had encountered “so many” parents who were “in complete despair because they have run out of options”.
Children at the centre were screened for malnutrition by measuring their upper arms, with those on the edge of malnutrition given fortified, high-energy biscuits as a preventive treatment, and malnourished children given ready-to-use therapeutic food.
“It’s basically a medicine that’s administered to children like a paste. They take it over a series of weeks to get better,” said Ingram. “But we just don’t have enough, the demand is really high, and supplies are low.”
No surge of aid into Gaza one week after famine declaration: Charity chief
The declaration of famine in parts of Gaza by a global hunger monitor one week ago has not resulted in any noticeable increase of aid into the territory, says Amjad Shawa, the head of the NGO Network.
“There’s no improvement of the Gaza famine case, no real effort that we could see on the ground to deal with this famine situation,” he told Al Jazeera. “We were expecting that there would be real interventions, pressure from the international community to lift the blockade.”
He said that since last Friday’s declaration of famine in the Gaza Governorate, more people had starved to death, while many others had begun to suffer from malnutrition.
The amount of aid flowing into Gaza was still “very limited”, sufficient for only about 10 percent of the population’s needs, he said.
Five more Palestinians starve to death in Gaza
Gaza’s Health Ministry has recorded five deaths “due to famine and malnutrition” in the past 24 hours, including two children.
This brings the total number of hunger-related deaths to 322, including 121 children.
At least 5 more Palestinians killed in latest Israeli attacks on Gaza
Five more Palestinians, including a child, have been killed in the latest Israeli attacks on Gaza, according to medical and emergency sources in the territory.
The child was killed by Israeli drone fire in an attack on the Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City, an ambulance source told our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic.
Two people were killed and one injured in an attack on Khan Younis, southern Gaza, sources at the Nasser Medical Complex said.
Another person was killed, and several injured, in shelling of Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood, according to a source at al-Ahli Hospital.
A man carries the shrouded body of a child at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, August 29
