A quarter of children aged six months to five years and pregnant and lactating women examined last week in the facilities of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Gaza suffer from malnutrition, the NGO denounced on Friday.
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“The deliberate use of hunger as a weapon of war by the Israeli authorities in Gaza has reached unprecedented levels, patients and health professionals suffering from hunger,” alerts MSF in a press release.
Caroline Willemen, project coordinator at the MSF clinic in the city of Gaza, explains that they are registering “now 25 new patients with malnutrition each day”.
In this clinic, the number of people with malnutrition has been quadrupled since May 18 and the severe malnutrition rate in children under the age of five has tripled in the past two weeks.
“This is a deliberate famine, caused by the Israeli authorities as part of the current genocidal campaign. Sliding, killing and injuring people who are desperately looking for help is unacceptable, ”denounces MSF.
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. He very partially softened at the end of May a total blockade imposed in early March at the Palestinian enclave, which led to very serious shortages of food, drugs and other basic necessities.
Israel, for its part, accuses the Islamist movement Hamas of exploiting the suffering of civilians, in particular by stealing food distributed to resell it at exorbitant prices or by shooting people waiting for help.
“War crimes”
Meanwhile, MSF alert, “the attacks continue on food distribution sites, where the distribution mechanism sponsored by the Israeli authorities through the Gaza Humaninian Foundation (GHF), repeatedly kills people who are desperately looking to get help”.
The UN on Tuesday accused the Israeli army of having killed in 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.
“These food distributions are not humanitarian aid, they are war crimes committed in broad daylight and under the guise of compassion. Those who go to GHF food distributions know that they are as likely to receive a bag of flour as to leave with a ball in the head, “said Dr. Mohammed Abu Mughaisib, assistant medical coordinator from MSF in Gaza.
In addition to people injured on GHF distribution sites, MSF teams have treated dozens of people injured by the Israeli army while they were waiting for trucks carrying flour.
On July 20, MSF medical teams and the Ministry of Health of the Sheikh Radwan Clinic in the north of Gaza treated 122 people injured by bullet while they were waiting for a distribution of flour, and 46 people were already died when they arrived.
On July 3, an MSF employee was killed in an incident similar to Khan Younès.
