A total of 185 people in Gaza died “due to malnutrition” in August, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, as an additional 13 people, including three children, have died in 24 hours since then as the catastrophic effects of Israeli-induced famine in the enclave worsen.
The statement issued on Tuesday said more than 83 people, including 15 children, had died since the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a United Nations-backed global hunger-monitoring system, declared last month that parts of Gaza were undergoing a full-blown famine.
The Health Ministry also said 43,000 children below the age of five were suffering from malnutrition along with more than 55,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women. Two-thirds of pregnant women were suffering from anaemia, the highest rate in years, it added. Mothers and newborns are the most at risk from malnutrition.
The total number of hunger-related deaths in the besieged enclave now stands at 361, including 130 children, since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza on October 7, 2023.
Israel has killed at least 63,557 people in Gaza and wounded 160,660 during the war.
The IPC declared on August 22 that 514,000 people in the Gaza Strip, close to a quarter of the enclave’s population, are experiencing famine. It expected the number to rise to 641,000 by the end of September.
The IPC made its declaration after more than 22 months of war, during which Israeli forces have destroyed medical facilities, schools, infrastructure and bakeries; blocked the entry of aid into the besieged Strip; and targeted and killed Palestinians seeking food aid.
This is the first time the IPC has recorded famine outside Africa, and the global group predicted that famine conditions would spread to Deir el-Balah in central Gaza and Khan Younis in the south by the end of this month.
After the IPC’s declaration, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the famine a “man-made disaster, a moral indictment and a failure of humanity itself”.
Guterres said Israel had “unequivocal obligations” under international law as an occupying power to ensure food and medical supplies enter Gaza.
Humanitarian organisations have demanded action. For its part, Israel rejected the findings, saying there was no famine in Gaza despite the IPC’s overwhelming evidence.
At least 54 Palestinians, including several aid seekers, were killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza since dawn on Tuesday, Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Abu Azzoum reported at midday from Deir el-Balah. Israeli attacks are now focused on Gaza City as the Israeli army bombs it and tries to forcibly displace its residents to the southern part of the enclave.
“Civilians on the ground are bearing the brunt. There are still hundreds of thousands of families in Gaza City,” Azzoum said. “They refuse to leave because they know that there are no safe spaces in central and southern Gaza and they would rather stay close to their communities and what’s left of their houses.”
Once teeming and crowded with residential buildings, Gaza City had been home to one million Palestinians, nearly half of Gaza’s population, but it is now a landscape of rubble.
The world’s top genocide scholars formally declared that Israel’s war on Gaza meets the legal definition of genocide, marking a landmark intervention from leading experts in the field of international law.
The International Association of Genocide Scholars, a 500-member body of academics founded in 1994, passed a resolution on Monday stating that Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza fulfil the definition of genocide set out in the 1948 UN Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
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