At least 29 children and elderly people have died from “starvation-related” deaths in the Gaza Strip in recent days, the Palestinian health minister says, warning that thousands more are at risk as limited aid begins trickling into the bombarded enclave.
Majed Abu Ramadan told reporters on Thursday that earlier comments by the United Nations aid chief to the BBC that 14,000 babies could die without desperately needed food aid were “very realistic”, but could be an underestimation.
Israel has allowed limited deliveries of humanitarian assistance into Gaza amid a wave of international condemnation of its 11-week total blockade on the territory, which spurred warnings of mass famine.
But UN officials have said the aid entering Gaza is “nowhere near enough” to meet the needs of the population in the war-torn enclave.
About 90 truckloads of aid entered Gaza on Thursday, but Abu Ramadan said most of what was allowed in was limited to “flour for bakeries”.
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said on Thursday afternoon that “a handful of bakeries in Gaza are baking bread again after receiving limited supplies overnight”.
“This is a critical first step – but assistance must be scaled up. More essential food is needed to push back the risk of famine. Bread alone is not enough for people to survive,” the agency said in a post on X.
The president of the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), Younis al-Khatib, had earlier said many Palestinians had yet to receive any supplies so far. “No civilian has received anything yet,” al-Khatib told reporters.
He said most of the aid trucks are still at the Karem Abu Salem crossing, known as Kerem Shalom to Israelis, in southern Gaza.
As limited deliveries enter the Strip, the Israeli military has continued to launch attacks across the enclave, with medical sources telling Al Jazeera that at least 51 Palestinians have been killed since dawn on Thursday.
At least 53,655 Palestinians have been killed and more than 121,000 others injured since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee also announced new forced evacuation orders for Palestinians in Jabalia and Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza. He said in a post on X that the army will “significantly expand its military activity” in the area.
‘Drop in the ocean’
Reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said that while Palestinians have welcomed the influx of aid, it is a “drop in the ocean” compared with the population’s needs.
“Five hundred aid trucks are needed on a daily basis in order to avert the current food crisis in the territory,” Abu Azzoum explained.
Still, Gaza resident Ahmed Abed al-Daym said the aid trucks were a “positive sign” amid dire conditions.
“Our homes are empty – there is no bread, and our children are going hungry,” he told Al Jazeera.
“In many households, bread has completely disappeared. What people urgently need is a steady and sufficient flow of flour and other essentials. Unfortunately, the limited aid that has entered so far falls far short of meeting our needs.”
Another resident, Reem Zidiah, said that due to the mass starvation that Gaza is enduring, no one is safe in the besieged enclave.
“All of us here in Gaza, we don’t think about tomorrow because we don’t know what will happen tomorrow – whether we’re going to live or die,” Zidiah told Al Jazeera.
Meanwhile, Action Against Hunger teams on the ground in southern Gaza warned that there was less than a seven-days’ supply of food to prevent acute malnutrition in children.
Natalia Anguera, the humanitarian group’s head of Middle East operations, said “flour has come in and some bakeries in the south have resumed operations”.
However, she stressed that “specific nutritional supplies reserves for children under five are about to run out”.
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