Starving Gazans eat rotten corn, animal fodder, leaves
Tempers rising in Jabalia over lack of food; one child holds up a sign reading: ‘We didn’t die from air strikes but we are dying from hunger,’ another holds aloft a placard that warns, ‘Famine eats away at our flesh.’
In the Jabalia refugee camp, bedraggled children wait expectantly, holding plastic containers and batered cooking pots for what litle food is available.
With supplies dwindling, costs are rising. A kilo of rice, for example, has shot up from seven shekels ($1.90) to 55 shekels, complains one man.
“We the grown-ups can still make it but these children who are four and five years old, what did they do wrong to sleep hungry and wake up hungry?” he said angrily.
The UN children’s agency UNICEF has warned that the alarming lack of food, surging malnutrition and disease could lead to an “explosion” in child deaths in Gaza.
One in six children aged under two in Gaza was acutely malnourished, it estimated on February 19.
Residents have taken to eating scavenged scraps of roten corn, animal fodder unfit for human consumption and even leaves to try to stave off the growing hunger pangs.
“There is no food, no wheat, no drinking water,” said one woman.
“We have started begging neighbours for money. We don’t have one shekel at home. We knock on doors and no one is giving us money”.
Tempers are rising in Jabalia over the lack of food and the consequences. On Friday, an impromptu protest was held involving dozens of people.
One child held up a sign reading: “We didn’t die from air strikes but we are dying from hunger.”
Another held alot a placard warning “Famine eats away at our flesh”, while protesters chanted “No to starvation. No to genocide. No to blockade.”
Over the weeks and months, Israel’s relentless bombardment has let Gaza largely a place of shatered concrete and lives.
Contaminated water, power cuts and overcrowding were already a problem in the densely populated camp, which was set up in 1948 and covers just 1.4 square kilometres (half a square mile).
Poverty, from high unemployment, was also an issue among its more than 100,000 people.
Now food is running out, with aid agencies unable to get in to the area because of the bombing -- and the frenzied looting of the few trucks that try to get through.
The World Food Programme this week said its teams reported “unprecedented levels of desperation” while the United Nations warned that 2.2 million people were on the brink of famine.
On Friday, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said a two-month-old baby died of malnutrition in hospital in Gaza City, seven kilometres (just over four miles) away from Jabalia.
Overall, at least 29,606 people have been killed in Gaza in the war, the ministry said on Saturday.
Meanwhile, concern deepened on Saturday over the growing humanitarian crisis in the war-torn Gaza Strip, with aid agencies warning of unprecedented levels of desperation and looming famine.
Dozens more Gazans were killed in Israeli strikes, the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry said, ater Israel’s spy chief joined talks with mediators in Paris seeking to unblock negotiations on a truce.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Saturday that at least 29,606 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory during the war between militants and Israel.
The toll includes at least 92 fatalities in the past 24 hours, while 69,737 people have been injured since the conflict began on October 7, a statement read.
As civilians in the besieged territory struggled to get food and supplies, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees warned Gazans were “in extreme peril while the world watches”.
In northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, bedraggled children held plastic containers and batered cooking pots for what litle food was available.
Food is running out, with aid agencies unable to get into the area because of the bombing, while the trucks that do try to get through face frenzied looting.
Residents have taken to eating scavenged scraps of roten corn, animal fodder unfit for human consumption and even leaves.
The World Food Programme said this week its teams reported “unprecedented levels of desperation” while the United Nations warned that 2.2 million people were on the brink of famine.