‘People were dying in front of us’: Daily Israeli gauntlet of death in Gaza

Palestinians describe horrific scenes in Northern Gaza in the daily desperation to access food under Israeli fire.

A six-year-old Palestinian boy and a 30-year-old man have died from malnutrition resulting from Israeli-induced starvation of the besieged enclave, the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza has said, as hunger-related deaths climb and deadly Israeli bombardment continues across the territory.

The deaths of Wissam Abu Mohsen and young Jamal Fadi al-Najjar on Tuesday came shortly after Gaza’s Health Ministry said five more people had died of famine within 24 hours, bringing the total number of starvation-related fatalities since the start of Israel’s war to 227, including more than 100 children.

In the relentless and punishing daily desperation to find food under Israeli fire, two Palestinians described horrific scenes in northern Gaza.

Speaking to media’s Ibrahim al-Khalili, Sayyid, a displaced Palestinian man, explained what had happened near the Zikim crossing.

“People were dying in front of us, bullets flying between our legs, and we couldn’t control anything,” he said.

“We go there just to get a bite to eat, but we can barely make it. We’re exhausted; we’re dying. A piece of bread now costs blood.”

Another man, Mohammed Abu Nahl, described how he was surrounded by the wounded and the dead, while he and others were crawling on their stomachs.

“I come here just to feed my children. I have no money to buy food, and if there were food and water available, I wouldn’t come here,” he told media.

“We want to stock up, and we all hear about ‘more humanitarian supplies are allowed in’, well it’s not happening yet, or it’s happening at a way too low a pace,” said Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO’s representative in the Palestinian territories.

Separately, Britain, Canada, Australia, Japan and 23 of their European allies said the humanitarian crisis in Gaza had reached “unimaginable levels”.

“Famine is unfolding before our eyes. Urgent action is needed now to halt and reverse starvation,” the foreign ministers of the countries said in a joint statement published by Britain. “We call on the government of Israel to provide authorisation for all international NGO aid shipments and to unblock essential humanitarian actors from operating.”

At least 73 Palestinians have been killed since dawn on Tuesday, hospital sources in Gaza told media, including 16 people desperately seeking aid for their families.

Israeli air strikes pounded the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood in northern Gaza late into night Tuesday, killing at least two people.

Israel attacks ‘safe zones’, rescue workers

media’s Hind Khoudary, reporting earlier from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, said Israeli forces struck multiple areas, including al-Mawasi, designated by Israel as a “safe zone”.

“A family of five have been killed in their makeshift shelter there earlier this morning. There have also been concentrated attacks on Gaza City, where residential homes have been targeted,” she said.

Rescue operations have also come under fire. Palestinian Civil Defence said one of its members, Abdul Rahman Maher Abu Latifa, was killed in an Israeli strike on his tent in al-Mawasi. Both his parents were also killed. The service said 137 of its members have been killed since the war began.

Other strikes killed three members of the al-Hasari family in Gaza City, while one member of the al-Salmi family also died. Twenty more people remain trapped under rubble.

Footage verified by media showed the aftermath of an Israeli attack on central Gaza City, with a stream of blood running down the street as people carried a wounded man to a vehicle.

Civil Defence spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said Israeli bombardment of Gaza City has intensified for three consecutive days, using “all types of weapons … bombs, drones and also highly explosive munitions that cause massive destruction to civilian homes”.

Israel is also blocking the entry of more than 430 food items into Gaza, despite allowing some aid trucks through last month under international pressure, Gaza’s Government Media Office said on Tuesday.

In a statement, it said banned items include “frozen meat of all kinds, frozen fish, cheese, dairy products, frozen vegetables, and fruits”, along with “hundreds of other items needed by the starving and sick”.

It added that Israel had directly targeted food sources, by not just preventing aid, but deliberately bombing 44 food banks, killing dozens of workers in them, and targeting “57 food distribution centres with bombardment”.

Earlier, the office accused Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the military body reporting on aid deliveries into the enclave, of “a pathetic attempt to cover up an internationally documented crime, the systematic starvation of the population of the Gaza Strip”.