UN agencies sounded the alarm on Tuesday over the humanitarian situation in the war-devastated Gaza Strip, saying that ten children are losing a leg or two every day and that half a million Palestinians are suffering from hunger at a “catastrophic” level.
In the 9th month of the war between Israel and Palestinian Hamas, the Israeli army continues to bombard Gaza by air and land and confront Palestinian fighters there, maintaining the siege of some 2.4 million inhabitants in the small territory.
On Tuesday, local Civil Defense announced that ten members of the family of Hamas political leader who lives in exile in Qatar, Ismaïl Haniyeh – his sister and nine people – had been killed in an Israeli strike on the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City (north). The military has not confirmed.
Israel vowed to destroy Hamas after an unprecedented October 7 attack by the Islamist movement on Israeli territory, and launched a large-scale offensive in Gaza in response, causing a humanitarian disaster and colossal destruction in addition to a heavy human toll. .
“Basically, every day we have 10 children who lose one or two legs on average. Ten a day means around 2,000 children after more than 260 days of this brutal war,” said the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) Philippe Lazzarini in Geneva.
He mentioned a report from the NGO “Save the Children” according to which since the start of the war “up to 21,000 children are missing” in Gaza, either because they are buried under rubble, prisoners, buried in anonymous graves or that they have lost contact with their loved ones.
A report from the Integrated Food Security Classification Framework (IPC), on which UN agencies are based, stressed that the entire Gaza Strip remains threatened by a “high and sustained risk”. of famine.
He said 495,000 people remained hungry at “catastrophic” levels in Gaza, but reported a slight improvement in the humanitarian situation in the territory’s north.
For Yasmina Guerda, humanitarian coordinator for the UN in Gaza, living conditions in Gaza “are about survival, and more”. “There is no longer a square centimeter where we feel safe. »
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the “intense” phase of fighting was coming to an end, particularly in Rafah where the army launched a ground offensive on May 7, but that the war against Hamas would continue.
He repeated that “the objective” was “to recover the hostages” held in Gaza and to “uproot the Hamas regime”, in place since 2007 and considered terrorist by the United States, the European Union and Israel.
On Tuesday, the army announced that it had struck two sites in Gaza used by Hamas, including one in Shati, targeting fighters who, according to it, were operating “in schools” and were “involved in the detention of hostages”.
According to an AFP correspondent, a strike killed five people, including two children, near al-Chifa hospital in Gaza City.
In the south, airstrikes and artillery fire targeted areas of Rafah, according to witnesses.
The war was sparked by the Hamas attack in southern Israel on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data. Of 251 people kidnapped, 116 are still held hostage in Gaza, of whom 42 are dead, according to the army.
The Israeli retaliatory offensive has so far killed 37,658 people, mostly civilians, including 32 in the past 24 hours, according to data from the Hamas-run Gaza government’s health ministry.
Announcing that the “intense” phase of the offensive was approaching in Gaza, Mr. Netanyahu said that after the end of this phase, Israel could “redeploy some forces towards the north”, on the border with Lebanon, ” for defensive purposes.”
The statement added to fears of a full-scale war between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, a Hamas ally, who have exchanged cross-border fire since October.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who received his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant in Washington on Tuesday, warned of a “war between Israel and Hezbollah” which could easily become a regional war, with disastrous consequences for the Middle East ” .