At least 21 children in Gaza have died from malnutrition and starvation over the past 72 hours, according to Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the director of Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
The update comes amid other figures released by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, reporting 15 additional deaths from hunger in the past 24 hours, including four children.
According to Abu Salmiya, the territory’s children are facing a dire emergency, with around 900,000 suffering from hunger. Of these, some 70,000 are already malnourished, he said, putting them at imminent risk of death without urgent intervention.
He further states that patients with diabetes and kidney disease are also at extreme risk due to a lack of essential treatment.
According to the ministry’s latest data, these recent deaths raise the cumulative number of people who have lost their lives due to starvation-related causes in Gaza to 101, 80 of whom are children.
These fatalities come amid a continuing blockade imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip, which has severely limited access to food and essential supplies.
With food scarcity accelerating, reaching “new and astonishing levels of desperation,” and medical infrastructure collapsing under pressure, health professionals in Gaza warn that the situation could worsen dramatically in the coming days.
The “last lifelines keeping people alive” in the territory “are collapsing,” the United Nations warns.
Aid agencies and humanitarian organizations have repeatedly called for secure humanitarian access, yet efforts remain stalled, as the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a US-Israeli-backed aid group, fails to achieve safe and sustained access to deliver aid.
The news lays further bare the harrowing collapse unfolding in the war-ravaged enclave. Since the war began in October 2023, a minimum of 59,029 Palestinians have been killed, according to figures released by the Health Ministry on 21 July.
As conditions deteriorate, desperate cries for food and medicine echo unanswered amid the rubble, and survival hangs by a thread.
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