UN experts: Gaza children dying in deliberate Israeli starvation campaign

“We declare that Israel’s deliberate and targeted starvation campaign once morest the Palestinian people constitutes a form of genocidal violence and has led to famine throughout Gaza,” 10 independent UN experts said in a statement.

The United Nations has not officially declared famine in the Gaza Strip.

But experts, including the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, insisted that “there is no denying that famine is occurring in Gaza.”

“Thirty-four Palestinians have died of malnutrition since October 7, most of them children,” added the experts, who are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council but do not speak for the United Nations.

UN experts listed three children who recently died “due to malnutrition.”

They added that “Fayez Attaya, who was not yet six months old, died on May 30, 2024, and Abdul Qader Al-Sarhi (13 years old) died on June 1, 2024 in Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, and Ahmed Abu Rida (9 years old) died only two days later “in the tent housing his displaced family in Al-Mawasi in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip.”

“With these children dying of starvation despite medical treatment in central Gaza, there is no doubt that famine has spread from northern Gaza to central and southern Gaza,” the experts added.

Experts denounced that “the world did not do more to avoid this catastrophe.”

For its part, the Israeli mission to the United Nations in Geneva immediately criticized their statement, accusing “Fakhri and many of the so-called ‘experts’ who joined his statement of being as accustomed to spreading misinformation as they are to supporting Hamas propaganda and shielding the terrorist organization from scrutiny.”

She added that “Israel is constantly working to increase its coordination and assistance in delivering humanitarian aid through the Gaza Strip,” noting that “Hamas is deliberately stealing and hiding aid from civilians.”

The Gaza Strip has been facing a major humanitarian crisis since the outbreak of the war on October 7.

The United Nations has warned for months of a “looming famine in Gaza, especially in the north, but it has not been officially declared.”

Source: AFP