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Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) holds a press conference in Berlin, Germany on October 16, 2024 [Halil Sağırkaya – Anadolu Agency]
The head of the UN agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) on Tuesday slammed the Israeli government’s policy of denying the famine in Gaza as “shameful”, Anadolu reports.
Speaking to the press at a seminar held in Santander, northern Spain, Philippe Lazzarini said: “There is a famine right now in Gaza. This is a man-made famine driven by political and military will.”
Lazzarini said Gaza is facing a situation that has “hit rock bottom” in humanitarian terms, adding that the failure of the international community to heed warnings about the famine is “shameful.”
“Gaza today is like hell. People are not only dying under bombardments, they are dying of hunger, and even when they go out to look for food, they are killed. Those who could reverse the situation in Gaza are doing nothing — no measures, no condemnation.
“Today we are witnessing complete impunity for Israel. There is no economic, political, or diplomatic cost for those committing these violations,” he said.
Calling for an immediate ceasefire and unrestricted access for humanitarian aid in Gaza, Lazzarini noted that aid equivalent to 6,000 UNRWA trucks, enough to cover the food needs of the Palestinian population for two months, is being held outside the Gaza Strip.
“The Israeli government’s policy of denying the famine in Gaza is shameful,” he said.
He also recalled that the number of humanitarian workers killed in Gaza is very high, with more than 360 UNRWA staff members having lost their lives.
Lazzarini strongly condemned the Israeli army’s airstrike on the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, which left journalists civilians dead.
He also called for support for Palestinian journalists, stressing that they remain the only witnesses to what is happening in Gaza, as Israel refuses to allow international reporters into the enclave to verify the situation on the ground.
A newborn baby in an incubator struggles to survive following Israel’s blockade of food and medical aid in Gaza City, Gaza on March 11, 2025. (Photo: Khalil Ramzi Alkahlut/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The Associated Press reported Wednesday that 580 premature infants are at risk of death due to “depleted” reserves of baby formula.
The Associated Press reported Wednesday that 580 premature infants are at risk of death, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, due to a shortage of medical-grade formula entering the strip.
Despite a recent policy change by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to allow “minimal aid” into the strip following a total blockade of food, water, shelter, and medication, it has proven far too little to keep hospitals running and keep people fed. It has proven especially deadly for children.
The AP report quotes Dr. Ahmed al-Farah, head of the pediatrics and obstetrics department at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, one of the few functional medical facilities left in Gaza.
Last week, al-Farah warned that the hospital’s stock of milk was “completely depleted,” and that unless aid was delivered immediately, the babies would face “an avoidable disaster.” The widely publicized call was answered with the shipment of 20 boxes of formula from the U.S. aid group Rahma Worldwide.
Al-Farah said this was enough to meet the needs of 10 babies for two weeks, but warned that in the long run it would be far too little, especially with no guarantee of aid in the future.
“This is not enough at all,” he told the AP. “It solved the problem temporarily, but what we need is a permeant solution: Lift the siege.”
Many other hospitals reported shortages of formula that had not been answered, such as Al-Rantisi Hospital in Gaza City, which was completely out of stock.
Fortified milk has become increasingly necessary in Gaza due to the increasing number of premature births. In May, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that as a result of widespread hunger, 1 in 5 children is now born pre-term or underweight. That malnutrition has also left many new mothers unable to breastfeed.
Dr. Asaad Nawajha, a pediatric specialist at Nasser Hospital, told Middle East Eye that the blockade has proven catastrophic for the health of both children and their mothers.
“This all goes back to the [harsh] conditions mothers endure amid this vicious war on the Gaza Strip,” Nawajha said. “Due to the lack of nutritious items entering the Gaza Strip, both mothers and children have been exposed to illnesses resulting from malnutrition.”
The Israeli government’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) has insisted that the amount of aid allowed into Gaza is sufficient to provide for the population.
On June 22, COGAT announced that 430 aid trucks had been allowed to enter the strip during the preceding week. However, this is but a fraction of the more than 600 trucks per day that the United Nations is necessary to meet their needs.
Many people who have come to aid sites administered by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), to obtain the meager supplies available, have been met with deadly violence from the Israeli military.
Since May 27, at least 549 Palestinians have been killed and more than 4,000 injured by Israeli forces at these sites, according to the U.N. Office for Coordinated Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the Gaza Ministry of Health. The Gaza Media Office reports at least 19 fatal incidents at these GHF sites over the span of just one month.
Many of the victims have been children. According to a study released Thursday by the humanitarian group Save the Children, children have been killed at 10 of those 19 incidents.
“No child should be killed searching for food,” said Ahmad Alhendawi, Save the Children’s regional director for the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe. “This is not a humanitarian operation—it’s a death trap.”
Vote Labour for Genocide.Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
Attacks on journalists and hospitals continue in Gaza. Pictured here are Hossam Shabat and Mohammad Mansour who were killed on Monday, March 24 in airstrikes. Photos via X
Israel’s genocide in Gaza is in full swing as the Trump administration unleashes its ally and provides it with all the weapons it needs.
One week after the resumption of Israel’s genocidal aggression on Gaza, Netanyahu appears determined to continue on a path of massacres and devastation rather than return to negotiations to restore the ceasefire.
For almost a year and a half, using the most advanced military technology, Israel systematically targeted journalists and media workers, hospitals, and shelters full of civilians. The attacking of such “strategic” targets across Gaza by Israeli forces has resumed with the return to genocide.
Bombardment of hospitals
The Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital
On Friday, March 21, the IOF blew up the only cancer health facility in the war-torn enclave; the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital in central Gaza. The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza clarified that the IOF detonated the hospital after using it “as a headquarters” for its troops throughout the time they have been occupying the Netzarim Corridor, which separates the northern part of the Gaza strip from its south.
The ministry described the bombardment of the hospital as a “heinous crime” and affirmed that “this criminal behavior by the occupier is consistent with the systematic destruction of the healthcare system and is part of the ongoing genocide.”
For its part, the Turkish Foreign Ministry denounced the destruction of the hospital, which was built by Türkiye and operated by local authorities in Gaza, in a statement on Friday. The ministry said that the attack is part of Israel’s broader policy that aims at “making Gaza uninhabitable”.
“The deliberate targeting of a hospital providing healthcare services to civilians in Gaza is part of Israel’s policy to render Gaza unlivable and force the Palestinian people to displacement,” the statement said.
The ministry further urged the international community to take “firm and effective steps against Israel’s unlawful attacks and systematic state terrorism.”
Nasser Hospital
Israel’s systematic targeting of hospitals and healthcare workers has continued with a new deadly air strike that hit the surgical unit at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis in Northern Gaza on Sunday, March 23.
The assault killed at least two people and injured several staff members. One of those killed was identified as Ismail Barhoum, a member of Hamas’s political bureau in the Gaza strip, who was receiving medical treatment in the surgical unit at the time of the assault. The other slain person is a 17-year-old boy.
Barhoum was reportedly admitted to Nasser hospital as he had sustained critical injuries in an Israeli airstrike around one week ago.
Many believe the attack was launched to assassinate Barhoum. However, analysts and activists suggest that it also targeted four non-Palestinian physicians, who were frequently interviewed by western media outlets about the crimes committed by the IOF that they witnessed during the genocide in Gaza.
These physicians are:
Dr. Mark Perlmutter
Dr. Feroze Sidwha
Dr. Tanya Haj Hassan
Dr. Tammy Abughnaim
They were operating for hundreds of days on ICU patients and saving lives with limited medical supplies amid daily power outages.
Analyzing the attack, the Palestinian Youth Movement highlighted the significant role these physicians would play as witnesses at future international tribunals against Israeli officials via a post published on Instagram.
“The ability of these world-class surgeons to serve as highly educated, Western-based, ‘credible’ outside witnesses to the genocide, put their lives at existential risk from the moment they began their work during the genocide. The doctors knew this, yet despite the grave danger they continued to be under, they never stopped working and serving their patients, refusing to abandon them even after Israel’s ceasefire violations that caused the all-out war to resume,” the group wrote.
Surviving the attack, American trauma surgeon Dr. Feroze Sidwha wrote on his account on X: “I was at Nasser Hospital in Gaza when it was bombed today. One of my patients, a 17-year-old boy, was killed. He would have gone home tomorrow. If I had been changing his dressings, as I planned to this evening, I probably would have been killed too. Attacking hospitals is a war crime, and it needs to stop.”
Two Palestinian journalists killed in one hour
Amidst the resumption of its genocidal aggression on the Gaza strip, Israel has resumed the systematic targeting of journalists in an attempt to silence the truth. On Monday, March 24 two Palestinian journalists were assassinated in two separate attacks in one hour.
Palestine Today correspondent Mohammad Mansour was killed in an Israeli airstrike north of Khan Younis, before another airstrike hit the car of Al Jazeera Mubasher correspondent Hossam Shabat in Salah al-Din Street in the northern Gaza strip.
Videos of Mansour’s family bidding him a farewell were posted online. The videos showed the journalist’s grief-stricken father carrying his microphone and trying to make Mansour hold it again with his lifeless hands.
“Speak up, speak up, tell the whole world about what has been happening, the image can express everything,” Mansour’s father said as he was sobbing over his son’s dead body.
Hossam Shabat’s team shared his final message via his official X account, which he seems to have requested be published after his death.
“If you’re reading this, it means I have been killed—most likely targeted—by the Israeli occupation forces. When this all began, I was only 21 years old—a college student with dreams like anyone else. For the past 18 months, I have dedicated every moment of my life to my people. I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute, determined to show the world the truth they tried to bury. I slept on pavements, in schools, in tents—anywhere I could. Each day was a battle for survival. I endured hunger for months, yet I never left my people’s side,” he wrote.
“By God, I fulfilled my duty as a journalist. I risked everything to report the truth, and now, I am finally at rest—something I haven’t known in the past 18 months. I did all this because I believe in the Palestinian cause. I believe this land is ours, and it has been the highest honor of my life to die defending it and serving its people.”
“I ask you now: do not stop speaking about Gaza. Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting, keep telling our stories—until Palestine is free,” Hossam urged the free people of the world at the end of his message.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemned the assassination of the two journalists in a statement on Monday.
“CPJ is appalled that we are once again seeing Palestinians weeping over the bodies of dead journalists in Gaza,” CPJ’s Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna said.
“This nightmare in Gaza has to end. The international community must act fast to ensure that journalists are kept safe and hold Israel to account for the deaths of Hossam Shabat and Mohammed Mansour. Journalists are civilians and it is illegal to attack them in a war zone,” De la Serna added.
Israel appears indifferent about the lives of its captives
Since October 2023, Israeli fighter jets have been launching arbitrary shelling across the Gaza strip putting the lives of everyone there at imminent risk, including Israeli captives.
The Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, released a new video on Monday showing the two Israeli captives Elkana Bohbot and Yosef Haim Ohana, speaking to the Israeli public about their suffering.
Ohana emphasized that the video was not broadcast as an act of psychological warfare on Hamas’ part, but was instead something that he and Bohbot requested from their captors to have their voices heard by their people.
The captive stressed that closing the border-crossings and blockading humanitarian aid to Gaza by their government has left them with no food to consume. He also affirmed that Hamas fighters were “keen and concerned”, providing them with everything they needed.
Ohana said that he received a “severe blow” by his government when it decided to resume its aggression on Gaza on March 18, as the IOF’s aerial attacks could have killed them, and that they saw death before their eyes.
With an obvious outrage at the Israeli government, Bohbot said: “Enough with this government silencing our voice.”
“The prisoners who were with us before and now released, give them a chance to speak and express their opinions. Stop silencing their voices. Let them Speak. Let the truth come out,” he added.
Ohana and Bohbot called on released captive Ohad Ben Ami to recount his experiences in captivity, thus, that would pressure the Israeli government for speeding up their release.
The US has “unleashed Israel” with all the weapons it needs to proceed with genocide
Confirming the US’s full support and partnership in the renewed genocide in Gaza, Deputy US Special Envoy to “the Middle East” Morgan Ortagus told Fox News on Sunday, that the Trump administration “has unleashed Israel and provided all the weapons needed to continue the war.”
While the US seeks to reaffirm its partnership in murdering Palestinians, Israel continues to commit daily massacres across the Gaza strip, raising the official death toll to over 50,021 people killed since October 2023, according to the latest report published by Palestinian health authorities.
Widely respected institutions such as The Lancet medical journal, and UN human rights bodies have asserted that the death tally is likely severely undercounted, with the actual number being up to 40% higher.
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Newborn, baby and child patients are deprived of necessary treatment due to power crisis and lack of medicines as Israeli forces cutting off electricity, preventing the entry of fuel and various supplies disrupted the functioning of all hospitals in the region, at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, Gaza on July 04, 2024. (Photo: Hani Alshaer/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“It’s an impossible situation, because even if we prioritize the little fuel that is left to the most urgent departments, we know that they won’t last more than 36 to 48 hours,” said Julie Faucon, MSF medical team leader in Gaza.
The international humanitarian group Médecins Sans Frontières, also kno wn as Doctors Without Borders or MSF, warned in a Wednesday statement that newborn babies and other patients are at dire risk as southern Gaza’s Nasser Hospital runs out of fuel.
The group warned that electricity for the MSF-supported Nasser Hospital, where MSF members are providing emergency, maternity, pediatric, burn, and trauma care, may be cut off for some hospital departments leaving patients without “lifesaving care.” The hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit is currently treating children and newborns who are reliant on mechanical ventilation and incubators. All of these young patients are dependent on electricity from fuel generators, MSF wrote.
Nasser Hospital, as well as two other facilities in the Gaza Strip, Al-Aqsa Hospital and European Gaza Hospital, are nearing the need to close due to lack of fuel, the group reported Wednesday.
“It’s an impossible situation, because even if we prioritize the little fuel that is left to the most urgent departments, we know that they won’t last more than 36 to 48 hours,” said Julie Faucon, MSF medical team leader in Gaza, according to the statement. “While some patients are hanging on by a thread, the lack of sustained electricity is impacting the level of care we can provide to those with burns and trauma.”
Pascale Coissard, MSF emergency coordinator, said that the situation is “a consequence of Israel’s ongoing blockade and continuous criminal looting of lifesaving supplies.”
In mid-July, the United Nations reported that “Israeli authorities continue to tightly control allocations of incoming fuel, thereby limiting humanitarian operations, especially by local partners,” and just last week the body noted that only 16 of the region’s 36 hospitals remained partially in operation.
Pointing to lack of medical supplies, equipment, and personnel, Rik Peeperkorn, the World Health Organization representative for the West Bank and Gaza, told a recent U.N. Security Council meeting that “the health sector is being systematically dismantled.”
Attacks by the Israeli military have left northern Gaza’s three hospitals—the Kamal Adwan Hospital, al-Awda Hospital, and the Indonesian Hospital—either entirely out of service or barely functioning.
Hussam Abu Safia, the head of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, was detained by Israeli forces during their raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital in late December.
Human rights defenders and the medical community have called for his release, it’s believed that he is being held in an Israeli detention center, though the Israeli officials had given news media and human rights groups conflicting messages about his whereabouts.
A man holds a Palestinian, injured during Israeli attacks on refugee camps, as patients and bodies are brought to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on June 8, 2024. (Photo by Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“It’s a nightmare at Al-Aqsa,” said Samuel Johann, MSF coordinator in Gaza. “How many more men, women, and children have to be killed before world leaders decide to put an end to this massacre?”
Palestinian officials said at least 210 people were killed and more than 400 injured as the Israel Defense Forces conducted an operation in the central Gaza Strip on Saturday to rescue four of over 240 hostages taken by Hamas militants last year.
Israeli forces rescued Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, and Shlomi Ziv—all attendees or security guards at a music festival that Palestinian militants attacked on October 7—from two locations in Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, according to the IDF. There are 116 hostages still being held in the Hamas-governed enclave, and at least 41 are believed to be dead.
Abu Obaida, a spokesperson for Hamas’ military wing, said Saturday that “the enemy succeeded in releasing some of its hostages by committing horrific massacres, but at the same time, killed some of them during the operation.”
CNNreported that spokespeople for Israel’s police and military said an Israeli policeman from a counterterrorism unit was killed and estimated casualties from the operation at “under 100.” The outlet also noted the higher death toll cited by Gaza officials and spoke with witnesses—including Abu Abdallah, who said that “dogs were eating people’s remains. We pulled out six martyrs, all torn-up children and women, we risked our lives to get them to the hospital.”
The bodies of 109 Palestinians including 23 children and 11 women were taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where spokesperson Khalil Degran told The Associated Press more than 100 wounded also arrived. He said that overall, 210 dead had been taken there and to Al-Awda Hospital, saying he had spoken to the director there. Al-Awda’s numbers couldn’t immediately be confirmed.
AP reporters saw dozens of bodies brought from the Nuseirat and Deir al-Balah areas, as smoke rose in the distance and armored vehicles rolled by.
A baby was among the dead. Small children wailed, covered in blood. Bodies were placed on the ground outside, their feet bare, as more wounded were rushed in.
“It’s a nightmare at Al-Aqsa,” said Samuel Johann, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) coordinator in Gaza, in a statement. “There have been back-to-back mass casualties as densely populated areas are bombed. It’s way beyond what anyone could deal with in a functional hospital, let alone with the scarce resources we have here.”
In addition to killing more than 36,800 Palestinians and wounding over 83,600—according to Gaza officials—the IDF’s eight-month retaliation for the October 7 attack has devastated civilian infrastructure across the besieged coastal enclave, including hospitals.
“How many more men, women, and children have to be killed before world leaders decide to put an end to this massacre?” Johann asked amid cease-fire and hostage negotiations mediated by Egypt, Qatar, and the United States—which has provided weapons and diplomatic support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war, despite nationwide protests, including on Saturday.
Karin Huster, an MSF medical referent, shared an audio recording about her experience at Al-Aqsa’s emergency department Saturday afternoon: “Total chaos inside; the entire emergency room… was completely packed with patients on the floor coming from the bombings in Nuseirat. There were hundreds of patients, and we did whatever we could to stabilize them… And, thank God we were able to refer a bunch of patients to Nasser Hospital as well as IMC Field Hospital that is not far away from here.”
“Despite the fact that the place was completely overwhelmed, it did an amazing job,” Huster continued. “There is nothing, nothing at all that justifies what I saw today. Nothing. These children—the 3-month-old, the 7-year-old, the 12-year-old that died—the 25-year-old man, the 78-year-old woman, who all have horrendous injuries. Why did they deserve this? And why is the world looking on in silence? …To what level of horror do we need to go before we finally do something, before we finally tell Israel that this is not acceptable?”
Following intense bombings by Israeli forces this Saturday morning in the Middle Area of #Gaza, our teams are working along medical staff at Al-Aqsa and Nasser hospitals to treat an overwhelming number of severely injured patients, many of whom are women and children. pic.twitter.com/JCcPVAfxuE
Chris Hook, MSF medical referent at Nasser Hospital, shared an audio update from there, saying that “we’ve received, coming close now to about 50 badly injured patients. There’s people with multiple major open fractures of their limbs. We’ve got several unconscious children who are trying to be escorted through CT scan and on to intensive care.”
“A few very bad burns have come through, and already four or five people who’ve required chest tube insertion, and things like this, for major injuries to the chest,” he said, explaining that the hospital has a limited ability to perform CT scans, a shortage of pain killers, and a full intensive care unit. “More patients are arriving. It’s a serious mass casualty incident that is occurring right now.”
Council on American–Islamic Relations national executive director Nihad Awad said in a statement Saturday that “we strongly condemn the Israeli government’s horrific massacre at Nuseirat refugee camp, where Israeli forces, some hidden in a humanitarian aid truck, reportedly slaughtered at least 200 Palestinian civilians while freeing four Israeli hostages who could have and should have been safely released months ago as part of a cease-fire agreement that Benjamin Netanyahu keeps torpedoing so that he can continue the genocide and stay in office.”
“The Biden administration must be transparent about any U.S. involvement in this massacre and whether any Americans were in the units that carried it out,” Awad added. “The administration also must stop funding these daily incidents of mass slaughter and instead use American leverage to stop the genocide, free all hostages and political prisoners, and end the illegal occupation of Palestine that lies at the root of the violence.”
