‘Parents in Gaza do not know if their children will survive to see tomorrow’ warns UN as supplies dwindle
Critical food supplies in Gaza are reaching “dangerously low levels,” aid charities have warned, as Israel continues its bombardment of the region.
“Right now, parents in Gaza do not know whether they can feed their children today and whether they will even survive to see tomorrow,” warned Cindy McCain, executive director of the UN World Food Programme.
After visiting the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing, she said: “We need to continue to work together to get safe and sustained access to Gaza at a scale that aligns with the catastrophic conditions facing families there.”
The plea comes as the Palestinian death toll from Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October has reached 9,770 including 4,008 children, according to the region’s Hamas-run health ministry.
The Palestinian Authority, which is based in the West Bank, estimated that 50 per cent of housing units in Gaza have been destroyed, 70 per cent of its population displaced, and 16 out of 35 hospitals that can take in-patients have stopped functioning.
Air strikes early on Sunday struck the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, killing at least 40 people and injuring at least 34, with emergency services and residents were still digging through the rubble to find survivors.
Arafat Abu Mashaia, who lives in the camp, said the air strike flattened several multi-storey homes where people forced out of other parts of Gaza were sheltering.
“It was a true massacre,” he said while standing on the wreckage of destroyed homes.
An Israeli military spokesperson said they were looking into whether Hamas had been operating in the area at the time of the airstrike.
Another airstrike hit a house near a school at the Bureji refugee camp in central Gaza on Sunday, which staff at Al-Aqsa Hospital said kiled at least 13 people.
Israel has meanwhile continued to urge those in the north of the Gaza Strip to head to the south of the region, as it plans to ramp up a ground offensive in northern Gaza.
The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) told civilians that they had a four-hour window to evacuate south on one of the main highways, the Salah al-Din road.
IDF spokesman, Lt Col Peter Lerner, said it is “definitely safer in the south” despite Israeli strikes across the whole of the Gaza Strip.
He claimed any strikes in southern Gaza were “specific intelligence-based strikes, specifically against terrorist elements” but “that doesn’t say that there can’t unfortunately be deaths”.
Between 350,000 to 400,000 people remain in northern Gaza, US officials believe, with many asserting they would rather die in their homes than flee.
Meanwhile, Israeli air defences intercepted a drone heading to Israel from Lebanon as cross-border skirmishes continue.
The Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah, which has been exchanging fire with Israeli forces at the border for a month, said it had targeted several Israeli positions at the border using guided missiles and other weapons.
An Israeli strike targeted a car in southern Lebanon, killing three people, Lebanon’s state-owned National News Agency reported.
There have been renewed diplomatic efforts to pause the attacks.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made an unannounced visit to the West Bank to meet Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and former British prime minister Boris Johnson met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Jerusalem to “express solidarity” with Israel.
French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna reiterated calls on Sunday for an “immediate humanitarian truce” in Gaza, which she said must be able to lead to a ceasefire.
However, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “There will be no ceasefire without the return of our hostages, we say this to both our enemies and our friends. We will continue until we beat them.”
More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, most in the 7 October Hamas attack which triggered the fighting, and 242 hostages, including 37 children were taken from Israel into Gaza by the militant group.
The Israeli prime minister was forced to discipline one of his junior ministers earlier after he voiced openness to the idea of Israel carrying out a nuclear strike on Gaza.
Netanyahu’s office said Heritage Minister Amihay Eliyahu, from a far-right party in the coalition government, had been suspended from cabinet meetings “until further notice”.
