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A mother cries for her baby in front of an incubator containing her baby's body at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lakhia, Gaza Strip, on February 29, 2024.
CNN
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A growing number of children are dying from dehydration and malnutrition in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Ministry of Health announced on Sunday, and this week amid desperate conditions due to Israeli aid cuts and the destruction of the besieged enclave. There is a renewed sense of urgency for ceasefire negotiations.
Negotiators gathered in Egypt's capital Cairo on Sunday for talks on an Israeli-Hamas ceasefire agreement and the release of hostages from Gaza, despite international pressure to end hostilities and release hostages from the Gaza Strip. Israel did not send a delegation despite the growing number of protests, an Israeli official told CNN. A surge in humanitarian aid was desperately needed.
The official said the reason was that Hamas had not complied with two Israeli demands. One is a list of Israeli hostages, specifying the survivors and the dead. and confirmation of the proportion of Palestinian prisoners to be released from Israeli prisons in exchange for hostages taken during an October 7 attack by Hamas militants on communities in southern Israel.
As a Hamas delegation arrived in Cairo on Sunday, Hamas officials told CNN the militant group wanted a permanent end to the fighting before agreeing to release the hostages. However, a senior Hamas official did not immediately respond to CNN's questions about whether the militant group had acceded to Israel's terms.
This comes as the United States has become increasingly vocal about the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, with the United Nations saying hundreds of thousands of people are on the brink of starvation and that US ally Israel is receiving an overwhelming amount of aid. It warns that the area continues to be disturbed.
On Saturday, the United States conducted its first humanitarian airdrop on the Strip. There were 66 bundles containing food but no water or medical supplies, U.S. officials said. Aid groups have criticized airdrops as an ineffective and degrading method of getting aid to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and the UN chief of the International Crisis Group has said airdrops are at best a “temporary stopgap”. He said that it was no more than .
One of the strongest condemnations of Israel by a US official to date came on Sunday, when he said the people of the Gaza region were “starving” facing “inhumane” conditions and called for an increase in humanitarian aid to Gaza. This was made by US Vice President Kamala Harris, who strongly urged the He laid out conditions and called for further action from Israel.
She called for an “immediate ceasefire for at least the next six weeks,” a proposal currently on the negotiating table, and urged Hamas to release Israeli hostages.
“What we see every day in Gaza is devastating. There are also reports of families eating leaves and animal feed. Malnourished with little or no medical care. “Women are giving birth to babies, and children are dying from malnutrition and dehydration,” Harris said as dozens of Palestinians die amid Israeli military gunfire and panic at food lines in the Gaza Strip. I listed what I had done.
“The Israeli government needs to do more to significantly increase aid flows. There are no excuses,” Harris said.
Her comments also came at a critical moment in the Israel-Hamas war. The vice president is scheduled to meet in Washington on Monday with Benny Gantz, a key member of Israel's war cabinet, as the United States continues to insist on a temporary ceasefire and the release of hostages.
In northern Gaza, essential supplies are not reaching the people who need them most, leaving children starving and others fighting for their lives.
The number of children who have died from dehydration and malnutrition in northern Gaza has risen to 15, a Palestinian Health Ministry spokesperson said on Sunday.
Because international media has no access to wartime Gaza, CNN cannot independently confirm the children's deaths or their causes.
Gaza's Ministry of Health announced on Monday that 124 more people had died in the past 24 hours, bringing the death toll in the enclave since October 7 to 30,534.
Doctors at Kamal Adwan Hospital also feared for the lives of six children suffering from malnutrition and diarrhea in the intensive care unit as a result of the outage of generators and oxygen and the weak medical capacity.Ashraf al-Khidra the doctor said. Gaza's ministry spokesperson said in a statement.
The ministry said the death toll has increased since last week, when incubators and oxygen supplies at Kamal Adwan Hospital stopped operating overnight due to a lack of fuel.
One recent incident revealed a particularly desperate situation in northern Gaza.
More than 100 people were killed last week when Israeli forces opened fire on crowds, causing panic as starving Palestinian civilians gathered around food aid trucks, Palestinian officials and witnesses said.
Israel said its military fired warning shots to disperse the crowd. A UN team that visited the victims said many had sustained gunshot wounds.
The UN children's agency called for urgent action and called for “multiple reliable points of entry” for them to bring in aid.
“Humanitarian agencies like UNICEF must ensure that humanitarian crises are reversed, hunger is prevented and children's lives are saved,” UNICEF's Adel Khodor said in a statement on Sunday.
UNICEF said it was aware of at least 10 children dying of dehydration and malnutrition in recent days at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza.
“There are likely to be many more children fighting for their lives in some of Gaza's few remaining hospitals, and there are likely to be even more children in the north who are not receiving treatment at all,” Hoddle said. added.
She said the situation was “man-made, predictable and completely preventable” and warned that the number of child deaths could rise rapidly if immediate action was not taken. .
“Widespread shortages of nutritious food, safe water and health services are a direct result of access barriers and multiple risks facing UN humanitarian operations, particularly for children and mothers in the northern Gaza Strip. “It's affecting my body and interfering with my ability to breastfeed my baby,” she said.
“People are hungry, exhausted and traumatized. Many are clinging to life.”
