UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has given a notice, warning that famine looms around the Gaza Strip.
The agency stated that of the 2.3 million people in the Gaza Strip, 378,000 are at what it classifies as phase 5, or catastrophic levels of hunger.
Phase 5 refers to extreme lack of food, starvation and exhaustion of coping capacities.
It added that 939,000 people face phase 4 “emergency” levels of hunger.
According to OCHA, nutrition-focused NGOs and other UN agencies can only meet 25 percent of the nutritional needs for malnourished children and vulnerable mothers in the next two months.
The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) also released a video showing conditions inside a makeshift camp for displaced Palestinians in Gaza’s southern Rafah city.
“Some people have not eaten in days, the children have no winter clothes, there’s no medical care. Most products are not available on the market and when they are available, they are very expensive,” Olga Cherevko from the OCHA team said.
Cherevko added, “Shelter is a huge need and of course food, and most of all peace.”
Gaza’s health ministry disclosed that the number of Palestinians killed since the start of Israel’s attacks on October 7 has risen to 24,285.
It added that at least 61,154 others have been wounded.
At least 350,000 chronically ill patients are not receiving their medications because of the ongoing Israeli war.
The spokesperson for Gaza’s Health Ministry, Ashraf al-Qudra, called on international aid organisations to urgently provide medications.
Al-Qudra previously announced the depletion of the anaesthesia nitrous oxide gas in operating rooms, along with severe shortages of other crucial medical supplies.
Palestinian and international health and human rights organisations have warned of the total collapse of the faltering healthcare system in Gaza because of the ongoing war.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian education ministry disclosed that 4,368 Palestinian students have been killed in the occupied territories since the start of the Israeli aggression on October 7 on the Gaza Strip.
In a statement, the ministry said that the number of students killed in Gaza over the past three and a half months is 4,327, with another 7,819 wounded in Israeli attacks.
In the occupied West Bank, 41 students were killed and 282 others injured. At least 85 students were arrested by Israel in the same time period.
In the Gaza Strip, 231 teachers and administrators were killed and 756 injured.
According to the ministry, at least 281 government schools and 65 schools affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Refugees (UNRWA) were bombed by Israel in the Gaza Strip, resulting 83 of them being severely damaged and seven completely destroyed.
Hamas Fires Massive Salvo Of Projectiles Into Israel
Also on Tuesday, Hamas fired a barrage of dozens of rockets from an area in northern Gaza into Israel.
Hamza Attar, a Defence Analyst based in Luxembourg, said that the salvo was “a response to Israeli claims that they destroyed Hamas’s rocket capabilities.”
“If destroying the neighbourhoods of northern Gaza was the mission, then mission accomplished. But destroying Hamas’s military capabilities – I don’t think so. That will take years, not three months. We’ve seen that Israeli forces didn’t have a nice, easy picnic in Gaza. That was a very tough mission, and Israel didn’t achieve much.”
Hamza Attar
“It’s impossible to clear an ideology that easily. Hamas is an idea, part of the resistance. As long as the Israeli occupation continues, there will be Hamas,” he added.
Earlier, an Israeli Minister told a news agency that Hamas’ enduring control in Gaza, despite Israeli assaults, suggests that there is currently no viable alternative to its governance over the enclave.
“Hamas is far from being defeated, and if anyone thinks that there will be an alternative to its rule in the Gaza Strip, it simply won’t happen,” Gideon Sa’ar said.
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