Famine has spread throughout Gaza Strip, say UN experts

By Peter Kenny

GENEVA (AA) - The recent deaths of more Palestinian children due to hunger and malnutrition shows that famine has spread across the entire Gaza strip, a group of independent experts backed by the UN said Tuesday.

The experts said that 34 Palestinians had died from malnutrition since last Oct. 7 – when Israel’s offensive on Gaza began – most of them children.

The death of a child from malnutrition and dehydration indicates that health and social structures have been attacked and are critically weakened, the experts said in a statement.

“When the first child dies from malnutrition and dehydration, it becomes irrefutable that famine has taken hold,” they said.

They cited Fayez Ataya, who was barely 6 months old, who died on May 30, and 13-year-old Abdulqader Al-Serhi, who died on June 1 at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah.

There was also 9-year-old Ahmad Abu Reida, who died in June in a tent sheltering his displaced family in Al-Mawasi, Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.

All three children died from malnutrition and lack of access to adequate healthcare, said the experts.

- 'Starvation campaign ... is form of genocidal violence'

“With the death of these children from starvation despite medical treatment in central Gaza, there is no doubt that famine has spread from northern Gaza into central and southern Gaza,” said the experts.

“We declare that Israel’s intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza,” said the experts.

They called on the international community to prioritize the delivery of humanitarian aid by land by any means necessary, end Israel’s siege, and establish a cease-fire.

International groups and dozens of countries have decried Israel’s ongoing blockade of aid, food, and water from the Gaza Strip, which lets in only a trickle of what the enclave’s over 2 million people need to live.

“When a 2-month-old baby and 10-year-old Yazan Al Kafarneh died of hunger on 24 February and 4 March, respectively, this confirmed that famine had struck northern Gaza,” the experts said.

“The whole world should have intervened earlier to stop Israel’s genocidal starvation campaign and prevented these deaths.”