A quarter of children from six months to five years and pregnant women and infants examined last week at the Médecins Sin Frontières (MSF) facilities in Gaza suffered from malnutrition, denounced the NGO this Friday, July 25.
“The deliberate use of hunger as a gun by Israeli authorities in Gaza has reached unprecedented levels, patients and health professionals suffering from hunger,” MSF warns in a statement.
Caroline Willemen, project coordinator at the MSF Clinic in the city of Gaza, explains that they register “now 25 new patients with malnutrition every day.” In this clinic, the number of people with malnutrition has quadrupled since May 18 and the severe malnutrition rate in children under five years of age has tripled in the last two weeks.
“This is a deliberate famine, caused by Israeli authorities in the context of the current genocidal campaign. Transmitting, killing and hurting people who desperately seek help is unacceptable,” MSF said.
Very serious shortage
Israel, whose offensive began the day after the attack on the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on October 7, 2023, faces increasing international pressure on the dramatic humanitarian situation in Gaza. A total imposed blockade at the beginning of March at the Palestinian enclave was softened very partially, which led to a very serious shortage of food, drugs and other basic needs.
Israel, meanwhile, accuses the Islamist movement Hamas of exploiting the suffering of civilians, in particular when stealing food distributed to resell it at exorbitant prices or shoot people who expect help.
Meanwhile, the MSF alert, “the attacks continue in the food distribution sites, where the distribution mechanism sponsored by the Israeli authorities through the Humanine Foundation of Gaza (GHF), repeatedly kills people who desperately seek to get help.”
The UN accused the Israeli army on Tuesday of having killed Gaza since the end of May, more than 1,000 people who sought to obtain humanitarian aid, the vast majority of which near this foundation, also supported by the United States.
“War crimes”
“These food distributions are not humanitarian aid, they are war crimes committed in broad daylight and under the appearance of compassion. Those who go to the food distributions of the GHF know that they have such a chance of receiving a flour bag to go out with a ball in the head,” said Dr. Mohammed Abu Mughaisib, subconscious Medical Coordinator of MSF in Gaza.
In addition to the injured people in the GHF distribution sites, MSF teams have treated dozens of people injured by the Israeli army while waiting for trucks that transported flour.
On July 20, the MSF medical teams and the Ministry of Health of the Sheikh Radwan Clinic in Northern Gaza treated 122 people injured by bullet while waiting for a flour distribution, and 46 people have already died when they arrived. On July 3, an MSF employee died in an incident similar to Khan Younès.
Source: BFM TV
