The Israeli military killed at least 63 people across Gaza just hours after declaring daily “pauses” in operations to facilitate the passage of humanitarian aid, health officials said.
The military said on Sunday it would suspend operations daily from 10am until 8pm in parts of central and northern Gaza, including al-Mawasi, Deir el-Balah and Gaza City, and promised to open aid corridors from 6am to 11pm to let in food and medical supplies.
However, within hours of the so-called “humanitarian pause” taking effect, Israeli forces resumed air raids. One reported strike targeted a bakery in an area designated as a “safe zone”, according to Al Jazeera.
The humanitarian crisis continued to worsen. Health officials reported six more deaths, including of two children, from starvation in the past 24 hours, taking the total to 133.
Among the latest to succumb was five-month-old Zainab Abu Haleeb, who died of malnutrition at the Nasser Hospital.
“Three months inside the hospital and this is what I get in return, that she is dead,” her mother Israa Abu Haleeb told Al Jazeera.
The World Food Programme said one in three people in Gaza had gone days without food and about half a million were experiencing famine-like conditions.
More than 20 per cent of pregnant and breastfeeding women were malnourished, according to the World Health Organization.
Israel maintains that it is working to improve aid access and denies that famine exists in Gaza. But aid organisations say the situation is catastrophic, with a quarter of the population at risk of acute malnutrition. UN officials say the crisis won’t ease unless Israel speeds up the movement of aid convoys through its checkpoints.
A top UN official said last week Palestinians were beginning to resemble “walking corpses”. Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, said humanitarian workers were encountering children who were “emaciated, weak and at high risk of dying” without immediate intervention.
“Families are no longer coping. They’re breaking down, unable to survive,” Mr Lazzarini said. “Their existence is threatened.”
Israel has severely limited the flow of food and humanitarian aid into Gaza, allowing only a small number of trucks to enter each day after enforcing an 11-week total blockade earlier this year.
UN officials warn the current level of aid is merely a drop in the ocean compared to the scale of need.
The Israeli military intercepted an aid ship bound for Gaza that aimed to breach the blockade on the Palestinian territory, detaining 21 international activists and journalists and confiscating all cargo, including baby formula, food, and medicine, according to the Freedom Flotilla Coalition on Sunday.
The group said Israeli forces “violently intercepted” their vessel, Handala, in international waters around 40 nautical miles off the coast of Gaza, cutting off cameras and communication shortly before midnight on Saturday.
“All cargo was non-military, civilian and intended for direct distribution to a population facing deliberate starvation and medical collapse under Israel’s illegal blockade,’’ the group said in a statement.
It was the second ship operated by the coalition that Israeli forces prevented in recent months from delivering aid to Gaza.
It was reported on Sunday that Jordan and the UAE had begun airdropping aid into the besieged Palestinian territory. But Mr Lazzarini said “airdrops will not reverse the deepening starvation”.
“They are expensive, inefficient and can even kill starving civilians. It is a distraction & smokescreen,” he said in an X post.
“A manmade hunger can only be addressed by political will. Lift the siege, open the gates and guarantee safe movements with dignified access to people in need.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed nearly 60,000 Palestinians, injured over 144,000, and left most of the densely populated coastal territory in ruins and the majority of its 2.2 million people homeless and starving.
Israel launched the war in October 2023 after nearly 1,200 Israelis were killed and 251 taken hostage during a Hamas attack.
