The director of Gaza’s largest hospital confirmed Tuesday that at least 21 children have died of starvation and malnutrition over the past three days, underscoring the escalating humanitarian crisis in the war-torn enclave.
“Twenty-one children have died due to malnutrition and starvation in various areas across the Gaza Strip,” said Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya, head of Al-Shifa Medical Complex. He warned that more cases are arriving by the hour and feared that the number of starvation-related deaths could rise rapidly.
Gaza’s 2.4 million residents are experiencing unprecedented shortages of food, medicine, and basic supplies, with many killed while trying to collect aid. Aid distribution has become increasingly chaotic since the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) — backed by the U.S. and Israel — sidelined a large UN-led relief network. According to the UN, over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed near GHF distribution sites since May.
On Tuesday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the situation in Gaza a “horror show,” describing the scale of destruction and human suffering as unparalleled in recent times.
Following the collapse of a six-week ceasefire in March, Israel imposed a full blockade on Gaza, allowing limited aid to reenter only in late May. However, the temporary supplies from the ceasefire period have since run out.
Despite Israeli military spokesman Nadav Shoshani releasing a video claiming that “950 trucks worth of aid” were awaiting distribution inside Gaza, humanitarian agencies report difficulty accessing and distributing the aid due to ongoing Israeli restrictions and security concerns.
Adding to the growing urgency, the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday accused Israeli forces of storming a WHO facility, detaining staff at gunpoint, and forcibly evacuating women and children. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said staff were stripped and interrogated during the incident.
Meanwhile, Israeli ground operations have intensified in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah, previously considered a safe zone. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 88 percent of Gaza is now either under evacuation orders or designated as militarized zones. This has left the population with almost no safe refuge.
On the same day, airstrikes hit Al-Shati camp near Gaza City, killing at least 13 people and injuring more than 50. Displaced father Raed Bakr recounted the horror of losing his tent in the early-morning blast. “I felt like I was in a nightmare… The children were screaming,” he said. His wife was previously killed in an airstrike.
The Roman Catholic Church’s top leader in the region, Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa, who visited Gaza after a recent Israeli strike on the enclave’s only Catholic church, described the humanitarian situation as “morally unacceptable.”
Israel’s military campaign, now entering its tenth month, has claimed over 59,000 Palestinian lives — the majority of them civilians — according to the Hamas-run health ministry. The war began after Hamas launched a deadly attack on Israel in October 2023, killing more than 1,200 people.
