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Aid groups blame Israel’s Gaza restrictions for ‘mass starvation’
More than 100 organizations, including Save the Children and Doctors Without Borders, added to growing calls for aid restrictions to be eased and the war to end.
LONDON — More than 100 aid agencies and rights groups, including Save the Children and Doctors Without Borders, warned Wednesday that “mass starvation” was spreading across the Gaza Strip, adding to calls for Israel to lift restrictions on humanitarian aid to the besieged enclave.
The joint statement is the latest attempt to draw attention to a growing hunger crisis in Gaza. It was released after the European Union and at least 28 governments on Monday condemned the “drip feeding of aid” and said that civilian suffering had “reached new depths.”
Doctors Without Borders in Gaza has reported a “sharp and unprecedented rise in acute malnutrition.” Adults frequently collapse from hunger, the aid groups said in their statement, adding that stockpiles of food and other supplies warehoused outside the territory were being prevented from reaching people in need.
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Gaza’s Health Ministry said Wednesday that hospitals had registered 10 deaths because of famine or malnutrition in the previous 24 hours, bringing the total number of deaths from hunger since Saturday to 43.
There was no independent confirmation of the toll.
The United Nations’ World Food Program said this week that nearly a third of Gaza’s population, which stands at 2.1 million, was not eating for multiple days in a row.
Israel blocked deliveries of aid between March and May after it ended a ceasefire with Hamas. Since then, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a private Israeli-backed group, has managed a new system in which people go to a few distribution sites to obtain aid. The government says that the new system is designed to prevent Hamas from stealing aid, and the sites are in areas of Gaza controlled by Israeli forces.
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But the new system has been marred by near-daily violence. The United Nations said last week that more than 670 people had been killed near the new aid sites, many as a result of gunfire.
On Wednesday, Israel’s foreign ministry rejected the aid groups’ claims and said that the organizations were echoing Hamas’ talking points.
Israel has also blamed the United Nations for failing to distribute supplies that are already in Gaza. On Tuesday, COGAT, the Israeli government agency that oversees policy in Gaza and the West Bank, said that nearly 4,500 aid trucks had recently entered the territory.
The United Nations has said that insecurity and restrictions imposed by the Israeli military often make delivering food within Gaza impossible.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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