80% of world’s hungriest people live in Gaza: Palestine

By Awad Rajoub

RAMALLAH, Palestine (AA) – Some 80% of the world’s most hunger-ravaged people live in the Gaza Strip, said the Palestinian foreign minister on Tuesday

"Israel has openly destroyed more than 85% of the Gaza Strip, killed and starved children, and deprived the sick and injured of their basic right to treatment,'' Riyad al-Maliki said at an extraordinary ministerial meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in the Saudi city of Jeddah.

“Around 80% of the hungriest people in the world today live in Gaza,” he added.

Tuesday’s OIC meeting was called to discuss Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 30,600 people and injured over 72,000 others since Oct. 7 following a Hamas attack.

"Israel has virtually committed every violation of international law against our people, who are facing the most heinous forms of genocide,'' al-Maliki said.

Israel has imposed a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

*Writing by Mohammad Sio