By Brad Reed / Common Dreams
The Gaza Health Ministry announced on Monday that more than 100 children in Gaza have died of severe hunger during Israel’s siege of the territory.
As Al Jazeera reported, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said that a total of 222 Palestinians have died from hunger during the siege, including 101 children. The vast majority of these deaths have come in just the last three weeks when the hunger crisis in Gaza started to garner international media attention, the ministry said.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East on Monday emphasized the direness of the situation in a statement calling for a cease-fire to allow more aid into Gaza.
“People are being starved, children are being killed,” the agency said. “Families have lost everything. Political will and leadership can stop an escalation and end the war. Every heartbeat counts.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that there is no starvation crisis in Gaza and has said such reports are part of a “fake” propaganda campaign waged by Israel’s enemies.
However, it isn’t just the Gaza Health Ministry warning of a hunger crisis in the region, as international charity Save the Children last week saidthat 43% of pregnant and breastfeeding women who showed up to its clinics in Gaza last month were malnourished, which represented a threefold increase since March, when the Israeli military imposed a total siege on the area.
The latest numbers about starvation in Gaza come as the Israeli government is pushing forward with a plan to fully invade and occupy Gaza, which experts have warned will only exacerbate the humanitarian crisis among its people.
“If these plans are implemented, they will likely trigger another calamity in Gaza, reverberating across the region and causing further forced displacement, killings, and destruction,” said Miroslav Jenca, the United Nations assistant secretary general, over the weekend.
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