Jerusalem.- Hunger has claimed the lives of 59 Palestinians in
Gaza in 2025 alone, the enclave’s Ministry of Health said on Thursday after registering two new deaths, a number that exceeds the combined figure of the previous two years.
“Hospitals in the Gaza Strip recorded two new deaths from starvation and malnutrition in the last 24 hours“, announced Health, which raised the total count to 113 since Israel launched its military offensive against Gaza in October 2023.
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Last year, malnutrition claimed the lives of 50 Palestinians, while four more died from this cause in 2023.
Of the 113 dead, 81 were minors and 32 adults.
“We have eaten bread. Each of us has eaten a small piece of bread,” explained a Gazan in an exchange of messages with EFE on Wednesday afternoon.
“It’s very difficult to find food in the market and if we find it, we don’t have money to buy it. It’s very expensive,” she added.
Premature births and abortions
In addition, the Health Ministry denounces that the lack of food and a nutritious diet among Gazan mothers has triggered premature births, which rises to
1,556 in 2025; or abortions and fetal deaths, with a total of 3,120.
“At Nasser Hospital, in central Gaza, 168 patients admitted to the pediatrics and maternity wards were unable to receive food on July 20 and 21,” denounced Caroline Wellman, MSF project coordinator in Gaza City, in a statement this Thursday.
“Most of the children our teams are assisting are emaciated, weak and at high risk of dying if they do not receive the treatment they urgently need,” said the director of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, on X.
One in five children in the capital, Gaza City, are malnourished, according to UNRWA.
In total, Gaza’s Health Ministry recorded 28,677 cases of malnutrition among children so far this year.
The ravages of malnutrition in Gaza worsened this summer, following eleven weeks, from March 2 to May 18, of a total blockade by Israel on the access of basic goods to Gaza, including food, medicine, and fuel.
Although Israel allowed aid trucks to re-enter Gaza on May 19, the number has been very limited and its distribution risky, with more than 1,000 deaths from shots fired by the Israeli Army near distribution points or truck routes according to Health.
Help That Cannot Be Distributed
The Israeli Army blames UN agencies for not collecting and distributing some 950 trucks of aid that are already inside Gaza, but at the border. These organizations, for their part, denounce the obstacles that Israel imposes to collect it.
“The Kerem Shalom border crossing is not a McDonald’s drive-through where we stop and pick up what we’ve ordered,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric denounced on Wednesday.
To collect the aid, UN trucks need numerous permits from the Army to reach Kerem Shalom, which can extend the process for hours.
Also, they have to wait for the bombings and fighting on the roads they are traveling on to stop and, once there, transfer the contents of the truck waiting at the crossing to the one that will distribute the aid, Dujarric recalled.
“We, at UNRWA, have the equivalent of 6,000 trucks loaded with food and medical resources in Jordan and Egypt,” Lazzarini wrote on X.
In this context, the American
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) accused the UN of
“stockpiling” aid in Kerem Shalom and offered to distribute it
“for free”.
Soaring Prices
On top of all that, the aid that ends up in the markets does so at exorbitant prices.
“There are people who buy a can of milk for 320 shekels (about $95),” Al Awda hospital association member Mohammed Salha told EFE.
“We need them to open the borders and let the aid in,” he added.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) stated on Tuesday that a sack of flour costs about $100 in Gaza.
On November 21, 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his former Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, for committing war crimes in the Gaza Strip.
One of them is the “intentional and deliberate deprivation of the civilian population of Gaza of objects indispensable for their survival, including food.”
