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50 killed in attacks; Israeli assault ‘turning Gaza City into ash’ as starvation deaths rise
The mother of Khaled al-Shinbari, a Palestinian teenager who was killed by Israeli gunfire on Wednesday while waiting for aid in northern Gaza, according to medics, holds his shoes, while she is comforted by her sister, during Khaled’s funeral, at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City [Mahmoud Issa/Reuters]
(AL-JAZEERA) Sources at Gaza’s hospitals have revealed that at least 50 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks since the early hours of Thursday morning.
Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza City is levelling entire neighbourhoods, our correspondent on the ground reports, in an attempt to rid the city of its residents. Civil defence reports at least 1,500 homes have been destroyed.
UN chief Antonio Guterres said Israel’s seizure of Gaza City “must stop”, and condemned its recent attack on Nasser Hospital, which killed at least 20, including journalists and medical workers.
Gaza’s Ministry of Health has recorded four starvation deaths over the past 24 hours, and at least 50 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on the enclave Thursday, medical sources tell our team.
In videos posted by locals on Instagram and verified by Al Jazeera, Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip can be seen trying to catch drops of water in cans from underneath a truck transporting water.
The water they collect has run down the side of containers, through wooden pallets and along the underside of the truck.
Other children are cooling themselves in the extreme heat, allowing drops of water to fall over them.
The entire Gaza Strip continues to suffer under Israel’s famine-inducing starvation policy with severe shortages of food, water and medicine prevailing in all areas.
Cindy McCain, head of the UN’s World Food Programme, says families in Gaza are starving, but that her organisation is able to “deliver at scale”.
“Gaza is at a breaking point. I’ve just seen it myself,” she said in a post on X. “We must revive our network of 200-plus food distribution points, community kitchens and bakeries ASAP.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has delivered remarks addressing the latest developments in Gaza, where he says civilians face “another deadly escalation” with Israel’s initial steps to seize Gaza City.
“Expanded military operations in Gaza City will have devastating consequences,” Guterres said. “Hundreds of thousands of civilians already exhausted and traumatised will be forced to flee yet again, bunching families into even deeper peril. This must stop.”
Guterres has slammed Israel for failing to meet its humanitarian obligations in Gaza, where famine is “no longer a looming possibility” but “a present-day catastrophe”.
“People are dying from hunger,” he stressed. “Families are being torn apart by displacement and despair. Pregnant women are facing unimaginable risks. And the systems that sustain life – food, water, healthcare – have been systematically dismantled.”
“These are the facts on the ground,” he added. “And they are the result of deliberate decisions that defy basic humanity.”
He said Israel must immediately cooperate with the UN and other agencies trying to get aid into Gaza.
“Day after day, our efforts have been blocked, delayed and denied,” he said. “This is unacceptable.”
Hunger has carved away at the bodies of Gaza’s elderly, turning them into living skeletons.
“The famine has caused me to lose weight – I dropped from 78kg [172 pounds] to just 42kg [92.6 pounds],” Riyad al-Ghazali told Al Jazeera.
“There’s no food, and we have no money to buy any. Prices are extremely high. Look at what has become of me. My hands used to be full and strong; now they’re just skin and bone,” he added. “All I eat is half a loaf of bread because that’s all we have. Sometimes I eat only salt, because there is nothing else.”
His wife, Nadia Abu Shaaban, says sometimes they go to sleep without dinner. “Many times, Riyad goes to sleep without dinner – there is just no food,” she said.
Meanwhile, in Gaza’s nursing homes, caregivers have little to offer to their elderly patients. Some are so weak that they can no longer move.
“In recent months, we lost five elders to hunger and starvation,” Ashraf Hamada, head of the elderly care department, told Al Jazeera. “We have no basic supplies – nothing is available in markets or even charity kitchens.”
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